


Borrowed Light

by Terrantalen



Category: The Mighty Boosh (TV)
Genre: Anachronisms ahoy, Angst, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Banter, Classical Music, Comedy, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Explicit Consent, First Kiss, First Time, Fluff, Howard Moon Has a Rough Time, M/M, Magic, My Kink Is Describing Vince Noir Using Fussy 19th Century Language And I'm Not Sorry, Period-Typical Homophobia, Piano, Porn With Plot, Pretty Much All The Sex, Vague Attempts at Period Slang, Verbal Abuse, boys being soft, but i am sorry, victorian au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-16
Updated: 2020-05-25
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:54:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 63,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24200053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Terrantalen/pseuds/Terrantalen
Summary: A Victorian AU!When Howard Moon moved to London to pursue his dreams... well, he probably shouldn't have. Turns out getting a gig with the London Symphony Orchestra isn't as easy as he'd hoped. He's broke, nearly homeless, and bombarded by the pesky attention of his housemate, Vince Noir, who doesn't annoy him nearly as much as Howard pretends he does. With a unsympathetic landlord, a boss dead-set on making his life miserable, and magical shenanigans afoot, can Howard ever sort out what he really feels for Vince? Will he ever achieve his dream job? Will I actually have written a semi-competent summary of this fic by the time I stop typing this?Find out in Borrowed Light!
Relationships: Howard Moon/Vince Noir
Comments: 93
Kudos: 30
Collections: Bringing Back the Boosh 2020 Fic Exchange





	1. The Audition

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BobSkeleton](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BobSkeleton/gifts).



> Kindly assume that all background characters are played by Rich Fulcher. I always do.

The limelight wasn’t up. Thank Christ for small favors. The gaslight lamps along the walls were dimmed, probably to save on money when there was no audience to offset the cost of using them. The theater itself was a great, dark space bereft, as it was, of a crowd.

Empty theaters had a particular smell. Howard could never quite nail it down, what it was, exactly. Stale cologne, obviously. At least a thousand varieties of that, but the other notes that he could detect were abstract; intangibles that defied absolute quantification. There was something chemical and unpleasant, almost antiseptic in quality. Something like ozone, bright and sharp. Something else, some sort of deep musk that was perhaps heavily waxed wood. 

All of it formed a uniquely noxious slurry. It reminded him of the scent of church, almost, only not quite as sepulchral, not as damp, not as tallowy. The theater’s scent was heavy, but pleasanter.

He had never taken note of it, back when he merely went to theaters to watch. Part of him wondered if perhaps the theaters in Leeds did not possess the smell at all, but he doubted that was the case. He’d just never been of a mind to observe it until the first time he’d sat in a crowd of perhaps a dozen men in the half-dark, waiting for his turn. For his audition.

Just the word was enough to make him notice the scent afresh. It coiled in his nostrils and slid toward the back of his throat. 

A little tug, as though of a fisherman on a line, pulled at the pit of his stomach.

A piano had been hauled up and positioned at the center of the stage and man after man took their turn at it. Howard’s turn was coming soon. He’d arrived at the theater early, but he’d waited to enter until he’d seen a few men go in ahead of him. This audition was run, as many were, by method of a sign-in sheet. The performers were each called according to their order on the list. Howard hadn’t wanted to go first. If he could have had his choice, he’d have liked to go last, but, unfortunately, several men had trickled in behind him and he had ended up somewhere toward the end of the middle, perhaps at the beginning of the end.

So far, it was going alright. Nobody totally brilliant had gone, and Howard, though definitely on edge, hadn’t yet fallen prey to the sort of deep, overwhelming anxiety that he was prone to. It was just a creep. A trickle. He could manage a creep and a trickle. Manage them both with one hand behind his back and his foot tied to a chair. 

But, of course, there was that smell, sitting under his uvula and biding its time.

The pianist onstage limped his way through some Mozart. He was competent, but no more than competent. Probably, competence would be sufficient for a job like this. Howard had to remember that. It wasn’t like he was at the Royal Opera or the Symphony. He was just in a West End music hall (albeit one of the better, richer ones); he didn’t need to be Franz bleeding Liszt. He just needed to be adequate. A little better than adequate. 

Good. He just had to be good, to play clean. Clean and in rhythm. Howard could do that. He _could_.

 _But not on stage,_ some horrible, cruel voice taunted.

Lingering in the back of his skull was his friend, his enemy, and constant companion. The scent of the theater had started waking it up, just that little bit of sensory memory was enough to start it worming around and burrowing through the soft meat of his brain. It perused through the gallery of his thoughts languorous and torpid, slowly leafing through every memory he had of bad auditions, of bad practices, of bad _anything_. It pulled each one out like an old woman with a treasured curio and showed them to him with an unseemly and almost carnal delight.

_Remember when you were eight years old and you wet yourself in front of the whole parish singing the high note in O Holy Night?_

_How about when you missed that sharped C during practice last week?_

_What did your mother used to say?_

His imagination always found its way to this familiar territory.

_What a terrible racket. Howard, do stop that awful racket. What a racket you make, boy! That racket is unbearable…_

He clutched the arms of the seat he was sitting in, tried to still his fidgeting. 

_Don’t fidget, Howard. It’s unseemly._.

“’Oward Moon,” called a rough, Cockney voice.

Precisely on cue, Howard’s palms started to sweat. 

“Here,” he said, pointlessly. The Cockney, after all, wasn’t taking roll call. Howard stood. His heart began to hammer. He swallowed. His stomach burbled. 

The stage looked wretchedly far away from him.

_Why do you insist upon making these little displays of yourself? You are a Moon, dear. This is no fit way for you to go on._

He was sure his footsteps were echoing as he walked to the stage. No one else had echoed. Everyone was watching him, wondering why he was so bleeding loud, wondering why he thought he had the right to be there.

What were they seeing, he wondered?

A dowdy, tattered man who was under thirty, but actually looked well over, with too-long hair, too-large clothes, and a bowler hat that was faded from too many seasons of wear.

_You really must take more trouble with your appearance, Howard. Just look at the state of you._

_Stop it,_ Howard told himself.

He stood straighter, tried to convince himself that he was _confident_ in his own abilities. He hopped up the first step jauntily, but his toe caught on the second and he stumbled over the third, catching himself with his hand. He tried to ignore the nominally suppressed snickers that traveled the length of the theater. 

_Oh, Howard. Not again._

Howard scuttled to the piano and sat down on the bench. He cleared his throat. He was meant to say what he was going to play, but he suddenly forgot how to speak. He seemed, suddenly to have a lot of extra spit in his mouth. He tried to swallow, but he’d forgotten, evidently, how to do that as well.

He grimaced and tried again, “Brahms—" he squeaked, barely audible, even to himself.

“How’s that?” called out the same, unpolished Cockney voice. Christ, that accent was thick as porridge, and about as pleasant to have jammed into his ears. His annoyance stabbed through the armored hide of his fear.

He cleared his throat again, “Brahms, Hungarian Dance No. 5, F Sharp Minor.”

Howard lowered his hands to the keys. He knew them better than he knew his own heart, better than anything.

The music hung like an afterimage burned onto the back of a photo from a reused plate. Second only to the keys were the notes. He had all of it memorized for this moment. His audition. It wasn’t the most complex piece that he knew, but it was technical enough to be impressive, yet simple enough that it shouldn’t have caused him to panic.

Shouldn’t have. 

The notes evaporated. His fingers were paralyzed. 

No. Not again.

_Oh, yes, again. This is so very embarrassing. Why couldn’t you have taken up a proper hobby for a gentleman? You can’t even play in front of people, Howard! Give this up!_

Howard blinked his eyes. _Stop it,_ he scolded himself, _stop it, stop it, stop it._ But the self-flagellation only made it worse. He could feel sweat collecting at the edge of his collar, could feel it blossoming under his arms. He couldn’t make himself play a note. 

“You going to start sometime this century, boy?”

Giggles throughout the scant audience.

Howard nodded, “Yes,” he said through gritted teeth.

But he didn’t play. He couldn’t play. His bones had locked up like he’d been frozen solid. He couldn’t remember where to find middle C let alone where to start his piece. He was stuck, still as a statue for an embarrassingly long time. 

The smell of the room was noxious, overpowering. He tried to swallow back his rising gorge. He knew just a moment before it happened what was coming. 

He reached for his hat and barely managed to catch his own sick in it.

There it was.

The coup de grace.

_Howard Moon, everyone!_

He stood then. Stood, and walked off the stage, carrying his hat full of sick, and walked the long central aisle while the entire theater howled with what had to be nearly lethal doses of laughter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you want to check out the piece Howard is supposed to play in this scene, I have included a link for you!
> 
> [Brahams- Hungarian Dance No. 5](https://youtu.be/HCDygl0pttM)!


	2. Vince Noir: Music Hall Star

Howard took a detour to Waterloo bridge as he shambled back toward Dalston. The streets were darkening, the scent and chill of the murky Thames thick on the rising fog. Flickering pools of gaslight were awoken ahead of him, a lamplighter heralded him, his figure obscured from sight, but the evidence of him clear. 

Carriages and carts, women, men, and children were all crossing the bridge. Howard was just one among the many and no one paid him any attention as he walked to the rail and dumped his hat out into the churning, black murk below him. His sick splashed down and Howard wondered if he oughtn’t just follow after it. Hop over the edge and give himself over to drowning.

Only the thought that he’d probably somehow bollocks that up as well stopped him. He sighed and wiped his hat out as best he could with his kerchief. The damned thing smelled disgusting and, he reflected grimly, probably would do forever, which was perfect since he couldn’t afford a new one.

Howard left the river behind, walked through teeming streets, past factories, workhouses, and slums, ignoring the cold as best he could. October was just drawing to a close, All Saint’s Day was a little less than two weeks away, and then winter would be no longer be on the doorstep but very much inside the metaphorical _room_.

Christ, he was stupid.

It was always so easy for him to forget what it was like to audition. He always forgot that it wasn’t at all like playing at home on the nights he was alone and no one was there to listen. He always convinced himself that the next time would be different, and then he did foolish things like quit his job, secure in the belief that he wouldn’t need it anymore, only to discover that he would.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. 

He was never meant to be the kind of person who got behind on rent. He wasn’t supposed to be forced to skip meals because he’d run out of money to pay for more than one a day. He wasn’t supposed to wear his shoes until the soles were so thin, his toes touched pavement with every step. He wasn’t meant to be unable to replace his hat once it was ruined. 

He was meant to go home to a vicarage, to a wife he could not love, to say words he did not mean over and over until he died, secure but miserable.

He’d been proud of himself, for the first and only time in his life, when he’d moved (or perhaps, more accurately, run away) to London, and thrown away a comfortable, respectable life for his dream.

Howard Moon could play the piano. He could play it like he’d made a deal with the devil himself, but he couldn’t do it with a single ear listening other than his own.

Which meant that his talent was effectively useless.

It occurred to him, and not for the first time, that he was deluded to the bone. Incapable on one hand, dead stubborn on the other; but he had a lot further to go on his journey of _or die trying_ before he was willing to concede that he’d actually rather not. 

He’d needed that audition.

He needed money.

The thought filled him with distaste, but he knew he would be Mayfair bound come the morning. There was nothing else for it.

Shoreditch was a press of ragged squalor, of tinny music, and harsh voices. Hollow cheeked women peered at Howard from shadowy alleys as he walked north toward Dalston. They used to try and proposition him. They didn’t bother anymore. He didn’t regret the change, but he did regret the reason for it. Everyone, seemingly, could tell that he had fallen from grace. 

The compact streets of Shoreditch slowly opened up, the buildings began to look less desperate. Dalston wasn’t a fashionable suburb like those on the other side of London, but it was respectably middle class. The buildings were mostly neat, and made of brick, with gaslight lamps at regular intervals along the roads. 

His was a nicer neighborhood, really, than what he should have been able to afford, and he knew it, which made him… tolerant.

Not that, from the outside, the rooming house where he stayed looking in any way out of the ordinary.

It was like its neighbors: narrow and tall, with long windows cutting up the front, and a black door with sidelights that, tonight, glowed from the inside. It was the last of a row, with a narrow separation between it and the beginning of another row of houses. There was a second door down the alley which was probably meant to be a servant’s entrance, but was not. 

It was this door that made Howard needful of tolerance.

Of course, he’d known something was not quite up to snuff the instant he met his strange, somewhat fey landlord, but a low rent and a slew of unexpected modern conveniences made Howard willing to dismiss what might have been considered _warning signs_ as mere _quirks_ and he’d signed the lease, overjoyed with his luck.

Which, honestly, should have been the biggest warning sign of all. 

It had only taken a day to become apparent that his initial impression of Mr. Naboo was a correct one. He operated some sort of silly spiritualist sideline from out of the rear of the house. Howard didn’t ask questions, he didn’t want to know, but he would have had to be blind to miss the throngs of strange assorted _folk_ that slipped into the alley and he’d have to have been deaf to miss the eerie moans and theatrical rumbles that emanated from Mr. Naboo’s study. 

Howard didn’t believe in such nonsense himself, and he didn’t particularly care if Mr. Naboo took advantage of those who did, especially if the income from his endeavors enabled Howard to pay less in rent. He was able to tolerate the occasional ghoulish sound, the pervasive, bizarre scents, and the sight of sobbing widows with surprising ease for a man who’d grown up in a neat country house outside Leeds with only his mother and father for company. 

For what he charged, Howard wouldn’t have minded if Mr. Naboo had a mad wife locked in the attic, conducted regular experiments on freshly dug corpses, or liked to get his enemies drunk and wall them up in the basement. As far as he was concerned, all of that would have been absolutely tickety-boo.

The only thing that Howard did reproach him for was the absolute derangement of truth, the complete perversion of fact, that had occurred when Mr. Naboo had described Howard’s housemate. He could only paraphrase, now, but his memory insisted that Mr. Naboo had implied that he was a quiet, unobtrusive, _regular_ chap who would never give him much trouble. 

The lie was unconscionable. 

He could already hear, through the closed windows, above the general din of the London streets, that the typical evening goings-on were going on. 

An inelegant, warbling voice was singing, if one liked to be generous (which Howard didn’t), over an even less elegant and thunderous pounding that could only be coming from the sadly abused piano in the parlor. Altogether, it sounded a bit like a man shouting while someone else tried to codge him to death, using, improbably, a piano for his implement.

Mr. Browne would be over, then and Mr. Noir was... in.

Grimacing against the aural assault, Howard opened the heavy black door and stepped into the hall. Inside, it wasn’t worse than outside, but it was _louder_ , which certainly didn’t improve matters.

Howard saw his satchel where he’d forgotten it that afternoon. He gave it a kick but left it where it was. Mr. Naboo had rules about personal belongings in common areas, but he also had rules about excessive noise, so Howard didn’t feel that his own somewhat lax adherence to the professed rules was so very out of order.

He took off his greatcoat and hung it up on the coatrack in the vestibule. He regarded his hat dubiously, unsure whether or not the scent of it would contaminate his coat if he hung it over it. If it did, there was really nothing he could do to prevent it. He hung it up.

“ _I've chickens and conies, and pretty polonies, and excellent peppermint drops!_ ”

Howard closed his eyes and wondered how it came to be that some people were born without a sense of shame.

 _“Hi, I’m Vince,”_ Howard remembered the easy smile, the proffered hand, the immediate lapse in manners that didn’t even presume to offer Howard a surname at their first meeting, the shock of his dress, his face, his _hair_. 

_Guttersnipe_ , he remembered thinking.

He’d not been wrong. Vince Noir (Music Hall Star) was, almost definitely, a shoddily domesticated street urchin who’d somehow made good (at least compared to the rest of his natural sphere) and found himself sharing a living situation with people who were his betters.

He just didn’t seem to realize it.

Howard turned into the parlor just as Mr. Browne began forcing the piano through the refrain.

He didn’t, at first, see Mr. Noir, because, foolishly, Howard expected him to be doing something sensible, such as standing on the floor since floors are meant for standing upon. What is not meant for standing upon is the top of an upright piano.

So, even though he was dressed in a coat of jewel-toned ruby, with a waistcoat of pink brocade, and charcoal trousers that were almost indecently close cut, it took Howard a moment to notice him balanced atop the upright, _dancing_ along as he sang, but once he was noticed, well. It might have been that nothing else existed. 

It was a slow sort of dance; little twists of his foot, and slants of his hips, his hands drifting like lazy butterflies. Howard recalled the song Mr. Noir sang was meant for a woman, an air from the inescapable _H.M.S. Pinafore_. He supposed the gestures were meant to be feminized, except no woman alive had ever so easily and shamelessly demanded Howard’s complete attention. 

“ _Then buy of your Buttercup, dear Little Buttercup,_ ” Mr. Noir shouted, turning his face so that its geography was charted afresh by the gaslight, the shift utterly fascinating. “ _Sailors should never be_ —Howard!”

Mr. Noir leapt off the piano, causing the tune to be prematurely abandoned as Mr. Browne was forced to duck under his boots. He landed, light as a housecat and with just as little concern, in the center of the oriental rug. He rolled his shoulders as though such spectacles and acrobatics were everyday behavior and not wanton impropriety that would have shocked anyone who wasn’t completely reprehensible. 

He grinned, pleased, probably, to have vexed Howard so quickly upon his return home. It was radiant, his smile.

Howard looked down toward the stack of songbooks that was piled in a drunken heap on the side of the upright and did not look at the man who now stood in front of him.

“How was the audition?” Mr. Noir asked.

He had forgotten that he’d mentioned it. He didn’t, upon reflection, know why he had. “Fine,” Howard lied. He cast himself down onto the sofa and hoped there wouldn’t be any more questions.

Mr. Noir glanced over his shoulder at Mr. Browne. They shared a look. 

Howard wasn’t sure how it had happened, but they had come to know his moods. More specifically, Mr. Noir had come to know his moods. 

Mr. Browne, after all, didn’t seem to care overmuch about Howard in any way. He was the sort of frivolous gadabout who had little enough to talk of except which pocket handkerchief _might set off his eyes_ , or which style of neckcloth was _a la mode_ , and since Howard didn’t have anything to say on these topics, Mr. Browne had more or less dismissed him as a very dull fellow.

Howard, of course, might have made an effort to know Mr. Browne more if _his_ talents on the instrument they shared had been greater, but his abuse of that instrument and his inability to ever improve despite Howard’s friendly recommendations to him on techniques that he should _practice_ had proved that Howard was merely wasting his time.

Realistically, Mr. Noir was not much different than his friend. He too liked neckcloths, and frippery, and had abominable taste in music, but, somehow, he _was_ different. 

Howard had never been the sort to just _make friends_. Friendships for him had always been hard-won affairs, born through campaigns of name repetition, interest-mirroring, and personality suppression. Through these methods, he eventually was granted permission to write letters, perhaps, or at least have a simple ‘good morning’ directed his way should he pass his friend in the street.

The point was that friendship required quite a lot of effort on Howard’s part. He wasn’t used to it just happening, but it had happened with Mr. Noir. Frankly, it could not have simply _happened_ with a worse person, because, yes, he liked Mr. Noir but he didn’t just _like_ him.

An emotion like a toad trying to crawl up the smooth sides of a bucket hopped in Howard’s throat. Unease, yes, but something else too, something eager, but petrified, something that wanted to get out as much as it needed to be contained. 

His eyes flicked toward Mr. Noir, toward his slight, elegant figure, toward the dark, trailing mane of hair that was bound back with a black ribbon, his long hair that begged, begged to be released, to be allowed to let fall, to be stirred by wind, or carded through by fingers, or brushed against a caring hand at night, Mr. Noir’s eyes perhaps half-closed, his lips perhaps—

Howard looked away again, toward the deep shadows of the unused fireplace with a remonstration to cease being so... _fanciful_.

Howard was called back to the present situation by his traitorous eyes, which had once more looked up and caught Mr. Noir’s expression.

His whole ludicrous, sweetly expressive face was writ with sympathy, for he knew without Howard having to say that _fine_ when said in reference to an audition meant the exact opposite. “Howard,” he began, gently.

Howard was not about to be pitied by any stretch. “It’s Mr. Moon,” he snapped, “will you never make a token nod to propriety?”

Quick as an otter changing direction in the water, Mr. Noir cocked his head. The look of consolation evaporated, he smiled, “Not in me own home, I won’t,” he said, his accent going crooked as his grin. “No one’s here but you, me, and Leroy, anyway. What does it matter if I call you by your Christian name?”

“You’re not supposed to,” said Howard acidly.

“What, me specifically?”

“Yes, you specifically.”

“Why not?”

Howard rolled his eyes, “Because you’re not immediate family, such as a sister, brother, mother, or overly-affectionate father. Nor are you even so much as a chummy cousin. You’re practically a stranger—”

Mr. Noir guffawed, “A stranger? I’ve known you more than a year.”

“A year’s worth of acquaintance is hardly an intimacy.”

“People get married after less than a year,” Mr. Noir said, now smirking at Howard in that uniquely feline way of his.

Howard directed his attention toward the bookcase, “Just, please, in the name of the Lord and all his—”

“Oh, don’t invoke the name of the Lord!” Mr. Noir wailed so violently that Howard was forced to look at him again. He fell into a swoon and caught at Mr. Browne’s arm desperately, “You’ll banish me straight back to the circle of hell I’ve escaped! Mephistopheles himself sent me here to torment you by calling you by your Christian name! If he finds out you’ve banished me back, he’ll be furious.”

And, unhappily for Howard, he smiled. It was hard to resist doing so, but he had a frown fixed in place by the time Mr. Noir had stopped his pantomime, “You’re ridiculous,” he told him flatly.

Mr. Noir tilted his head, “I think you’ll find that you’re the one who’s ridiculous.”

“Now, lads, let’s not have another of your dust-ups,” Mr. Browne interjected. “I’ve had a long day and I don’t need it made longer by you two squabbling like alley cats.”

“We ain’t squabbling,” Mr. Noir insisted, “we’re having a discussion, isn’t that right, Howard?”

“Yes, that’s right,” Howard agreed automatically, and then he realized that Mr. Noir had used his Christian name again. He was about to correct the impropriety, but Mr. Noir was grinning at him once more and Howard couldn’t find the necessary rebuke. He reached for the evening paper and snapped it open, “Is Mr. Naboo in?” he asked.

“Yeah, he’s here,” Mr. Noir said. “If you’re looking to avoid him, you can always come to my show tonight. Leroy’s coming, aren’t you, Leroy?”

“You’re getting me complimentary drinks tokens, right?”

“Course. Wouldn’t make you watch me without,” Mr. Noir said with a grin. He turned toward Howard, “So? Howard? What do you say? You interested in a night out?”

“Absolutely not,” Howard said, giving the paper another snap. Even if he’d had the money to spare, he would have declined the invitation. He had no interest in the sort of performances he was sure to see at Mr. Noir’s place of work. It was an East End music hall, worse and rougher than those in the West, with less talent to go along with the poorer conditions. 

Mr. Noir’s singing was not likely to be the worst thing Howard would have to sit through if he went. In fact, Mr. Noir’s singing would probably be the best thing on offer.

Howard sniffed, “I’ve already had my ears assaulted once tonight and that was more than enough.”

“Alright, die of boredom, then.”

“I shall do no such thing. I’m going to have a peaceful evening, enriching my mind with the written word, sir.”

“With the paper?” Mr. Noir asked incredulously.

“No, with a novel.”

“I thought novels were brain-rotting clap-trap.”

“Wilkie Collins is brain-rotting clap-trap. I’m going to be enjoying keen insights to the human condition through the words of Leo Tolstoy.”

“What, that twenty-pound Russian brick that you keep lugging around the house like a corpse? Whatsit? _Peaceful War_ or something?”

“ _War and Peace_ , peaceful war doesn’t make any sense,” Howard corrected sharply before he caught Mr. Noir’s eye and perceived that he was obviously taking the piss. Howard narrowed his eyes, “When are you leaving?”

Mr. Noir plucked a walking stick out of the umbrella stand near the doorway, “Just about now,” he said. He flipped the walking stick in his hand, put it back, and selected another. “Sounds a bit depressing, that. _War and Peace_. Like a treatise. Anyway, you’re only about ten pages in, aren’t you? And been at it about a month? It can’t be that good. You sure you don’t want to come out and have some fun for a change?”

“It’s not depressing, it’s illuminating and I enjoy it. And it hasn’t been a month, it’s been a week at most.”

“Whatever,” Mr. Noir said, his hand coming to his hip. “Suit yourself, just don’t miss me too much. I don’t want to come home and find that you’ve bludgeoned yourself to death with your own book out of desperation.”

Howard sniffed dismissively, “I assure you, I won’t miss you. In fact, I’m sure I’ll bear the depravation of your company with an equanimity that has everything to do with the happy lack of it.”

There was again on Mr. Noir’s face the smile that was so delightful for Howard to behold. “See, Leroy?” he said, “That’s how a toff insults you. Proper, multisyllabic words and that. Could have just left it simple, but no. No common dismissals from our dear _Mr. Moon_.” 

Mr. Browne huffed a laugh and Howard had the uncomfortable sensation that he was being laughed at, but then Mr. Noir threw Howard a wink. 

_The cheeky little..._

“Shall we, Leroy?”

“Yes, with pleasure,” replied Mr. Browne. He gathered his things and then followed Vince out into the hall, the pair of them already chattering like starlings about _who the hell cared what_.

The front door shut with a click.

Howard felt something that he named relief settle over him. He ignored the even the vaguest notion that the emotion might have been willfully mislabeled.


	3. Mr. Naboo

Howard read until he felt his eyes beginning to grow heavy, which was, perhaps, slightly sooner than he would have liked to admit. It was dense prose, that was all. Like a heavy barley bread, you didn’t need much to feel satisfied. It was best to take it in little chunks, process what you’d had, and then come back to it the next night, or so Howard told himself as he shut _War and Peace_ having barely made appreciable progress.

The thought of barley bread of course retuned to mind how hungry he was and thinking of that only made him more exhausted. The next day, he knew, was going to be hellish. He set his book down on the side table and yawned behind his hand.

The upright was directly across from him. It was a friendly old instrument, as capable of tolerating the abuse of Mr. Browne as it was capable of producing exquisite music for Howard. Truly, it was nothing special. It was nothing at all compared to the instrument that he’d grown up playing, his mother’s parlor grand that had barely deigned to be contained by the confines of their music room.

 _That_ was an instrument to be sure, but for all its grandness, Howard wasn’t sure that he didn’t prefer the gentle, unassuming nature of the upright.

He stood, went to it, and gave the piano a pat, as though it were a faithful dog. He uttered a promise to play at the first possible opportunity. If he had been alone, truly alone, he would probably have played that night, but with Mr. Naboo lurking somewhere in his rooms, Howard refrained. 

He turned off the gaslight in the parlor and cold darkness wrapped around him. Why, he wondered, couldn’t he have at least _played_ at that audition? Probably for the same reason he could hardly bring himself to play when he knew someone else was in the house. 

He wanted to be heard and did not want to be heard, wanted to receive the praise he knew he deserved, but was utterly terrified of the judgment that might not necessarily result in that praise. 

It didn’t matter what other people thought. It truly didn’t. It never had. Or, perhaps it _shouldn’t do_ , but he could hardly deny that some part of him wanted, craved, bloody well needed _validation_. He wanted the confirmation. Yes, you’re good at this thing. You’re good at it and you were right to think that you are meant for it and anyone who has ever said that you _weren’t_ was wrong. 

Yet, though he was sure, in his best moments, that this was so, he also knew that wouldn’t be able to bear another voice added to the chorus that insisted that it wasn’t.

He closed his eyes and leaned back against the wall, the will to move sapped out of him.

Alone in the dark, in the quiet, the clock on the mantel took on an almost hammering quality. A low, steady _tick, tock_ that was both metronomic and hypnotic. He turned his face slightly toward it. It was only half consciously that he began to tap a rhythm against the wall, filling in the space between each tick of the clock with a flutter of precise strokes.

The ghost of music filled his mind; he heard the notes that he had been unable to find that afternoon, heard them and executed them as though the keys were under his fingers. He opened his eyes and took a step toward the upright, ready to play, damn Mr. Naboo, damn his foolish nerves—

_What do you suppose you’re doing?_

Howard stopped, half expecting to see the person to whom that voice belonged, the tall figure, the dour face turned in a frown... but, no, of course not. Such a notion was ridiculous.

Yet, the sound of the clock, which had sounded to him so ordinary merely a moment earlier seemed to him now to sound like footsteps. Footsteps on a polished floor, approaching at the unhurried pace of authority. 

With a shudder, he went out into the hall.

His satchel was still sitting just where he’d left it by the door. The devil-may-care attitude that had led him to leave it there had been replaced by unease. Not that he was afraid of Mr. Naboo and whatever retribution he might exact if he found Howard’s satchel where it was not meant to be, but still. Better safe than sorry.

He walked to it, stooped to pick it up and noticed, as he bent forward, a faint gasp of fog intruding under the door. He looked up through the sidelight just to confirm what this evidence suggested.

The fog had grown thick. The streets outside were deathly quiet. People were more likely to stay indoors on nights like this. The fog made easy work for footpads and the like, distorting sound as well as providing cover. The lamp across the road burned like a beacon and threw back odd shadows, nothing but occasional patches of dark within dark, slouched, black, and ghostly; dim, shambling figures glimpsed through the fog.

London, on nights like this, seemed a strange place indeed. 

Howard knew himself to be surrounded by people. Hundreds upon thousands of them, but he could have been looking out onto a lonesome marsh, or a bog, or an open moor; the shapes could have been people (they were people, Howard knew) but so could they have been strange beasts, or spirits, or even monsters. There was no saying _what_ they were when so little of their forms could be discerned, when their movement seemed so little like ordinary perambulation. They seemed almost to drift, or float…

A creak sounded somewhere behind him.

Howard spun around but saw nothing. The long, narrow hallway was empty of any living presence. There were only the stairs, steep and cramped at Howard’s right, the wells of darkness open at the thresholds of the parlor and dining room along Howard’s left, and the closed door at the very end of the hall which led to Mr. Naboo’s chambers.

“Hello?” Howard asked anyway. His voice fell dead. He hadn’t seen a single soul since Mr. Noir and Mr. Browne had left him some hours earlier. 

Mr. Naboo wasn’t given to socializing with his tenants most nights, so this wasn’t precisely unusual, but less usual was the complete lack of any sort of noise from the rear of the house. A spiritualist’s trade often led to certain theatrics, theatrics that faded from an annoyance to a mere susurrus upon familiarity, something unnoticed but understood to be an intrinsic part of the atmosphere. Yet, he could not recall a single gasp or bang of flash powder all night.

Altogether, it had been _too_ quiet.

He supposed that the creak he’d just heard might have come from Mr. Naboo’s rooms, except that the sound had seemed so very close behind him. Almost _directly_ behind him. 

Impossible, given the evidence of his own eyes. 

Yes, quite impossible.

Unless the cause of the sound had not been wholly _natural_. 

He clutched his satchel tight against his chest and hastened toward the stairs.

He had just gained the bottommost stair when, in a bizarre perversion of his wishes, the strange stillness was breeched by a scream.

Perhaps, by the light of day, the scream could have been dismissed as a mere shout of surprise rather than one of utter terror, but, in Howard’s fanciful mood, it sounded like the most blood-curdling shriek he’d ever heard. It was not a voice he recognized.

He had a horrible thought that someone had gained entry to the house through the rear and was even now murdering Mr. Naboo. Perhaps someone he’d bamboozled had returned for retribution after the charm he’d sold them didn’t work, though why they should be the one to scream in that particular scenario, Howard wasn’t sure. It could, he supposed, be Mr. Naboo shouting. He’d never heard him speak with anything but an almost sepulchral calm; there was no telling what he might sound like were he agitated, as being murdered would probably excite him to be.

Howard didn’t consider himself a coward (his anxiety surrounding auditions notwithstanding) but while he might not be a coward, he was also not the sort to heedlessly charge into danger. He was, rather, the sort to cautiously and methodically approach danger. Or, perhaps, the type to _consider_ cautiously and methodically approaching danger. 

Yes, weigh the options, consider his course of action, form a solid plan, or maybe just tell himself he’d imagined the whole thing and go upstairs, lock the door to his room, and hope that no one pointed the finger at him when the bobbies came in the morning…

“What you doing?” 

Howard jumped a mile. 

Wherever the hell he’d come from, Howard wasn’t sure, but it was only Mr. Naboo. Possibly he’d been in the dining room? It didn’t matter. Howard was relieved but then his relief was chased by a much more practical fear than that of something unnatural.

He was going to be short on rent for the second month in a row. 

“Oh, hello, Mr. Naboo,” Howard said in a jittery rush, “I er... I just thought I heard something. Is all. And... but if you’re here, I’m sure... I mean, it’s probably business of yours, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Mr. Naboo said. He continued staring impassively at Howard.

Howard cleared his throat. “So, all’s well then?”

“Yeah.”

“Great. I’ll just,” Howard pointed up the stairs and took another step.

“Rent’s due in two weeks.” 

Howard grimaced, then tried to clear away the expression with what, he was sure, was only mild success, “Yep. Sure is. I know it is. Well aware of that, actually, yes.”

Mr. Naboo was so still, he might have been a statue. Howard recalled a description he’d read once of a sort of giant spider which made for itself a webbed tunnel it then covered with a leaf. In this place, the creature lurked utterly still, waiting until some poor unsuspecting insect wandered onto its trapdoor and then it would spring from its hiding place, seize its unlucky prey and consume it. It was theorized that the creature’s instinct to kill was triggered by vibrations in the leaf litter above it.

It was this description that prompted Howard to remain _very still_ as Mr. Naboo stared at him.

“You going to have it?”

“Yes,” Howard lied.

“And the back rent?”

“Of course! Ha ha.” 

Whatever instinct had prompted him to verbally _say_ ‘ha ha’ was obviously a wrong one. Mr. Naboo’s nonexistent lips somehow compressed. He sighed, “Vince is out, yeah?”

“Um, yes,” Howard said, relieved, but a bit surprised by this change of conversational tack.

“Good.” Mr. Naboo nodded toward the stairs, “Stay in your room tonight, yeah?”

“Yes sir, of course, sir,” Howard said quickly.

Mr. Naboo walked down the hall as Howard dashed up the stairs and Howard heard the door to Mr. Naboo’s study shut. 

Howard’s heart spent several seconds flapping in his chest until his fear was replaced by indignance. His bout of anxiety in the hall seemed worse than simple fancy, his response to Mr. Naboo, needlessly obsequious and foolish. He’d allowed himself to be commanded like he was a child. Like there were _actual_ forces outside the understanding of reason to contend with. 

Well, there weren’t. 

Howard was pretty sure, anyway, that there weren’t. 

It was easier to be almost completely certain of it in the well-lit upstairs hall with no more strange noises coming from below, and with a self-proclaimed shaman on hand to deal with it if there actually were. 

Who was Mr. Naboo to tell him what to do anyway? Howard did pay to live in the rooming house. Or, he at least made an effort to pay to live in the rooming house. Point was, it was his home too. He had a right go where he liked in it, and, further, to know what sort of crack pots were invading his domicile.

Instead of going into his room, Howard went into the WC.

It was a fancy piece of work, the WC, one of the things, in fact, that had so attracted him to the property to begin with. It had taps, a bath, and a flush toilet, and was just about the most impressive thing that Howard had ever seen. There was, though, a special trick that the room could do besides the obvious sanitary wizardry that it performed perforce. Sound was carried up the pipes from the room below. So well, in fact, that the first time it had happened, Howard had half-thought someone was in the room with him.

He was familiar with the effect now. As a gentleman, he typically left the room if he heard voices below. It had been drilled into him since childhood that it was _common_ to eavesdrop, and some things when beaten in stayed put. So, it was with a thrill of vestigial defiance that he shut the door of the WC and crept toward the corner of the room from which the sound could be heard best. 

The room directly below the WC was, of course, Mr. Naboo’s study.

He’d only been in that room once, and then, only for as long as it took him to sign his lease, but, just as Mr. Noir’s face once seen could never be forgotten, Mr. Naboo’s study was similarly unforgettable. He could picture the strange skulls, with shadows dancing in their orbital sockets from the flame of a hundred candles, the small table with the crystal ball set up in the middle of the room with throwing bones in a bowl to the side of it, the rolled up oriental rug leaning drunkenly in the corner; in short all the accoutrement of the fortune teller fixed up like staging for a play.

Howard had been affected by it, and he didn’t believe in the extrasensory world of spirit. How it affected those who did, he imagined, must be a hundred times worse.

Mr. Naboo’s voice traveled up the drainpipe and filled the bathroom with the slightly echoing sound of his soft, lisping speech. Howard moved slightly closer to the source to hear better.

“...months?”

“Not every day, mind. I am not an incautious person,” said Mr. Naboo’s guest. His voice was extremely posh. Howard had been to school with boys who sounded just like him and his mind sketched the details in. Hearty, muscular, short-trimmed hair, a moustache, probably as tall as Howard or taller. A man’s man. The sort of man Howard should have been. He continued, “I naturally considered that there might be... well, ill-effects, I suppose, that might stem from such an artifact if used injudiciously. I daresay, I used it as little as possible... at first. But it worked so well, you see, and I could detect no detriment to its use, so, I suppose, I started using it a bit _more_ frequently than might be deemed... wise.”

“And?”

“Headaches, then somnambulism. Nothing so terribly alarming,” said the man as though he wished rather than believed it to be so, “but I have never before had such disruptions to my health. I saw a doctor and he could not detect any malady that might cause my symptoms. I concluded that it might be due to the… because of the item. I stopped using it, even put it away, but it didn’t matter. I woke three times in places I had not gone to sleep the following week. It was unsupportable. I then returned to _that part_ of town and went in search of the man from whom I purchased the charm, but I could not detect him.”

“What did he look like?”

The man scoffed, “Yes, well, I did not get a proper look at his face. He wore a hood. I, foolishly, did not think… well, you understand. It’s all very _shady_ down that way. A man not wishing to reveal himself… Hell, I myself wore a low hat and a high collar. All I can say for certain was that he had a moustache and an odd accent.”

The man had just described more than half the men in London. Mr. Naboo seemed to know it too. His voice seemed especially flat as he asked the man what had happened next.

“Well, I asked one of the,” he lowered his voice, “ _gypsies_ for help, I was told, in no uncertain terms, that the aid I wanted could not be provided by her, nor anyone there. It is only through my chance connection with our mutual friend that I have found my way to your door, sir. I do hope you might assist?”

“Probably, yeah.”

Howard rolled his eyes at this response. Probably, Mr. Naboo was just as happy to bilk the poor sod as the mountebank who’d originally sold him the _charm_ or whatever it was had been in the first place.

“That’s good,” the man said. Even from his post upstairs, Howard could tell the ensuing pause was a pregnant one. The man cleared his throat, “I… there is… oh, I don’t know why I’m mentioning it. It’s just… I had the strangest impression tonight as I made my way here, that someone was… following me.” He forced a laugh then added, “Perhaps the devil himself.”

“Hmm,” said Mr. Naboo. “Get the mirror, Bollo.”

Ah, the mysterious Mr. Bollo was here tonight. Howard had no idea who the gravelly voiced associate of Mr. Naboo was, never having seen the man in the flesh, but Mr. Bollo was apparently an intimate to all of Mr. Naboo’s dealings. 

“I’m sorry, is he quite safe?” asked the man.

“Yes.”

“It’s just—”

“He’s perfectly safe. Unless he gets shouted at,” Mr. Naboo said snappishly. 

Howard wondered what Mr. Bollo looked like. He imagined him a large and imposing figure, the sort of person who could provide physical backup to the shifty little charlatan when the need arose. “Cheers, Bollo.”

There was an unnarrated stretch of time, during which whatever the mirror was needed for was done. At last Mr. Naboo said, “Yeah, there’s the problem. Cursed, innit?”

Howard gave the tub a dubious look. Cursed, indeed.

Mr. Bollo grunted, “What we need?”

Mr. Naboo called for a dizzying list of components that included _henbane, pangolin blood, adder heart, and harpy claws_ among other things. Howard meditated on the effect that this further chicanery was having on the poor gentleman below. Obviously, nothing was really happening, but Howard was sure it looked impressive. 

Finally, all the necessaries were evidently gathered. Mr. Naboo instructed the man to hold himself still, and then an unpleasant, smoky scent perfumed the privy as, presumably, Mr. Naboo lit something on fire. “ _Ethamai, koratai, betanai!_ ” Mr. Naboo said. He didn’t bother putting on the any type of airs, merely said the nonsense words in the same tone of voice he might have said anything. “Nothing? Hmm.”

Mr. Naboo evidently went back to the drawing board. Howard wondered if he was procuring a bat out of a cage, or perhaps denuding a rat of its entrails, something further to add to the feigned efficacy of whatever new _‘spell’_ he was about to try. “ _Bezzasus, practicus, metatarsusadductus!_ ”

Now there was a scream. A proper scream. Howard jumped in alarm. His heart immediately doubled its pace.

“It’s there!” yelled the man below in full hysterics, “It’s...” he trailed of in another heart-wrenching scream.

Something below was knocked over, the man’s voice changed in timbre; he unleashed the most wretched torrent of curses Howard had ever heard in his life in between gargling shouts and expectorations that hardly sounded as though they could have been produced by the same vocal cords. 

Howard was scarcely able to hear Mr. Naboo’s voice over all this cacophony. The shaman apparently felt no need to yell, but he did sound somewhat more forceful than usual as he delivered his instructions to Mr. Bollo. Howard heard only, “Hold him,” and then the man renewed his efforts to scream his lungs out with fresh energy.

 _“Please!”_ cried the man in his own voice, in between the warped contortions of his shrieks.

“Keep still,” Mr. Naboo instructed gravely. “This spell is big magic.”

Howard didn’t care what it was, as long at the poor fellow found some relief.

“ _Bip, bop, bam, alakazam,_ ” Mr. Naboo said in a strange, almost musical cadence, “ _groove to the move, get out, get in, release this man._ ”

Upon the conclusion of his words, there was a popping sound. A sensation as of falling gripped Howard and he felt as though he were being pulled toward the floor, but the feeling lasted no more than a moment, and then it was gone as though it had never happened.

From below, there was only silence, and Howard instantly thought that whatever had been done must have killed the man, but then there was a sob and then a bark of laughter. The man’s voice was his own again as he launched into a rather thick round of praise for Mr. Naboo and his abilities.

“No problem,” said Naboo. As though he had done nothing more than pause at a door and hold it for the gentleman below.

In fact, he’d done... far less than that, Howard reminded himself. Mr. Naboo had taken advantage of a madman. 

He swallowed and held his hands clasped together to stop their traitorous shaking. The amateur theater was over for the evening and Howard had no desire to remain in the WC for another single second.


	4. A Confrontation

Howard spent a restless night insisting to himself that the events of the evening had not unnerved him, and then falling into spells of uneasy sleep that terminated in sudden bouts of wakefulness. When one of these episodes fell upon him, he blamed the unpleasantness that waited for him in Mayfair the next morning, or the heavy tread upon the stairs that signaled the return of his housemate, or the banging of the rag and bone man making his rounds before dawn.

For a man who had nearly been ordained a minister, Howard kept only the barest semblance of faith in God. To suggest that he could have believed in anything mystical was simply absurd, and, whenever he posed the question to himself during that long night, he reassured himself that he did not hold any such belief. Mr. Naboo was a charlatan, plain and simple. There was no other opinion to be had on the subject, full stop.

But, every so often, in the percussive thumps that half woke him, Howard heard an echo of that sound, that strange pop, and hearing it led him to feel again that little pull or tug, and it was that feeling, that sensation of falling without falling that jolted him awake, over and over.

By the time the sky was beginning to take on the grayish hue of daylight, Howard had given up sleep as a lost cause, being that he was both too hungry to achieve it and rather too nervy as well. What he wanted was the ordinary, the usual. Something to ground him in the here and now, and to remind him that the world worked in prescribed and predetermined methods, not in wonderous or strange ones.

To gain his first dosage of this necessary medicine, he had only to swing his feet out of his bed and touch down on the icy wooden floor of his room. His breath was not quite hanging in the air in front of him, but it was a near thing. There was a glimmer of silver just in front of his lips as he exhaled, a presage of what would come when winter finally came to call.

His room was plain. He did not have much in it beyond the furniture it had come with. The white walls were bare of any photographs or paintings. The rickety dresser in the corner held only a few of his music books, his small collection of clothing, and his grooming implements. Altogether, the room looked a little uninhabited. He considered this a virtue. 

Having few material possessions meant that he was focused on concerns beyond the earthly, as a true artist should be, though, at this moment, the concerns that were beyond the earthly that were occupying him were not his art, nor philosophy, nor any of the rewards of the higher nature of mankind, but the worst sort of fantastical meditations that prevented actual, rational thought and mired people in lives of bewildering superstition.

That noise, that man, that scream. 

His mother would have told him that he was being foolish, and, indeed, it was a voice quite like hers that was berating him now, insisting that he was the worst kind of idiot for falling prey to whatever trick it was that Mr. Naboo had used to convince the man from the evening before that he’d been helped. That man had probably been mad. Howard wasn’t mad, and, further, hadn’t even been in the room, so he couldn’t comprehend why he found the whole experience so difficult to shake.

He splashed his face with the icy water from the pitcher on his nightstand. He would need hot water to get his soap to lather so that he could shave, and for that he would have to go to the WC. He therefore walked down the hallway toward the room that, only yesterday, had been nothing more than a collection of wonderous pipes and modern fixtures, but had stretched in the night into some nearly unrecognizable phantasm of itself. It felt as though some horrible bony hands might reach up out of the drain and Howard would find himself pulled down the long pipes, to the lair of some green-skinned and slimy monster.

It was not without trepidation, therefore, that he pulled open the door to the room. 

There was no window, and the gaslights in the hall were not burning, so it was dark. Howard saw little but the dim glow of the white sink toward which he took a step, or, rather, tried to take a step. His foot met with something on the floor, and he stumbled, the shock of this unexpected hazard nearly enough to kill him. 

“Christ!” Howard shouted at the same time that the shape on the floor flailed to life. 

“I’ll ‘ave y—” said the other person, and, voice roughened by sleep as it was, and his accent coming thicker than Howard had ever heard it, Howard was convinced that the monster that had been exorcised from the man the night before had been born in the flesh upon the floor of the bathroom, that all of his horrible fancies were coming true, but then the voice resolved itself into that of Mr. Noir. 

Howard looked down to see him reaching in his pocket for something. As soon as Mr. Noir looked up and saw Howard, he stopped. He sat up, clutching his side, “What the hell was that for?”

“Call it for lying in the middle of the floor like a… _drunken Cockney wastrel._ What the hell are you doing in here?”

“I’m allowed.”

Howard turned on the gaslight and looked around him, at the rumpled state of Mr. Noir’s clothing, at his hand rubbing at the back of his neck like it had a crick in it. “You didn’t sleep in here, did you?”

Mr. Noir shrugged. “Suppose I must have,” he said, looking around. Howard noticed that half of his face was stamped with the imprint of the small tiles from the floor. “Have I got a blinder,” he said shaking his head. He stretched his legs out in front of him, leaned his back against the edge of the tub, and then looked up at Howard with a grin, “You missed a good show, if I say so myself. How was your book?”

“You shouldn’t sleep in the bleeding loo! My God, you nearly killed me! I could have fallen over you and smashed my head on the—”

“Alright, alright,” Mr. Noir said, suppressively. “Christy, could you keep it down? You’ll wake up the whole house, banging on that.” He ran his hand through his hair and combed it off his face.

His hair was loose, Howard realized with a shock. He’d never before seen it unbound.

It was as good, better, than Howard had imagined. It fell about to his shoulders, the black sharp against the white collar of his shirt. It was hair like what Cathy Earnshaw might have had. It was wild, blissfully undomesticated, meant to be stirred by the whipping winds of an open moor. Mr. Noir rubbed his fingers through his long locks, ruffled them slightly. 

God, what did that hair _feel_ like?

Howard frowned at him, “You’re a disgrace.”

Mr. Noir laughed, “Yeah, alright.” He made a motion to push himself up off the floor and, rather without meaning to do it, Howard offered him his hand and tugged him to his feet. Mr. Noir brushed off the front of his waistcoat, and felt for his ascot, which, Howard could have told him, had gone missing. “Little early for you, isn’t it?” Mr. Noir asked conversationally.

“I… couldn’t sleep.”

Mr. Noir peeked up at him through his forelock, “Why’s that?”

Howard adjusted his focus to the corner of the sink. He’d been looking at Mr. Noir for quite long enough.

He imagined telling Mr. Noir all about his unsetting evening, imagined the distain his confession would be sure to draw forth, but the imagining failed somewhere between his confession of the occurrences and the souring of Mr. Noir’s countenance. He realized that he couldn’t actually imagine Mr. Noir dismissing him out of hand as so many others would have done, but then, the incident was, perhaps, best forgotten.

It was nothing anyway. It was much easier to see that with Mr. Noir looking at him, real, and solid, with proper daylight beginning to light the hallway. “Indigestion,” Howard said eventually.

“Ah, yeah, well that will happen when you bolt your food.”

Howard gave half a nod, then fixed Mr. Noir with a stare, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing! Only, you know how you eat.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Well, you know.” Mr. Noir pantomimed something that brought to mind a gulping and greedy dog, “Like that.”

“I do not eat like that.”

“You do a bit. I mean, I can’t blame you. Lately, you’ve taken on a bit of a,” he wobbled a hand in the air and made a noise meant to convey some indescribable, but obviously negative idea, “like you don’t get meals for days at a time. You’re melting away.”

“What?” Howard asked, aghast.

Mr. Noir then had the absolute audacity to pat at Howard’s stomach.

“ _Don’t touch me,_ ” Howard snapped.

Mr. Noir’s eyes widened, “I don’t mean anything by it. I’m just saying, you’ve gone a little thin. I had a word with Naboo about making sure we had food more regular like and all and...” he trailed off with a pensive shuffle, perhaps catching sight of Howard’s expression, which Howard was aware, must have gone very fierce.

Mr. Noir was, of course, referring to the other outright lie Mr. Naboo had told him, which was that two hot, wholesome meals per day were included with the price of his board. Howard had always been a little annoyed by their failure to manifest with the sort of regularity this promise might have led him to expect, but he was outright infuriated that Mr. Noir had _brought this up_ , apparently, and not even on his own behalf, but on _Howard’s_.

“You did what?” he spat.

“Well, I’m not about to watch you fall over dead because you’re on hard times.”

“I’m not on _hard times_! What the hell is wrong with you, you presumptuous little… Christ, you’re an absolute twit! I do not need help from you! I have my own affairs perfectly well in hand.”

Mr. Noir shifted his hips from left to right and kept his eyes directed somewhere in the region of his own feet. “Alright,” he said with a sigh. He brushed his hair away from his cheek, “I just…” his fingers now tangled at the nape of his neck, then raked his hair against the grain in a way that Howard found he could not tolerate observing. “I just know what it’s like,” he continued, gentle as the just breaking dawn. “Being hungry, alright? And, yeah, you’ve got… everything in hand, sure, but… Well, we do pay for those meals, don’t we? Least Naboo can do is provide them. That’s all, yeah?”

“I see,” Howard said, feeling like a damned berk for allowing his pride to be so easily bruised. Mr. Noir had only been trying to be kind.

Howard forgot that people did that sometimes.

“Good.” Mr. Noir’s boots scuffed on the floor as he turned to go.

Howard reached toward him, “Wait.”

Mr. Noir stopped at the threshold. 

Howard felt about in the cabinet over the sink until he found the small bottle of powder that he’d bought off one of the only honest apothecaries he’d ever met. He handed the bottle to Mr. Noir, “For your head,” he explained. “Take it as it says on the bottle with some water. It will… help.”

Mr. Noir smiled and there it was. The sun came over the hills and the world was filled with a light that Howard did not deserve to bask in. “Thanks, Howard.”

Howard looked down at the floor. “Yes. Think nothing of it.”


	5. Brook Street and Back Again

When he’d first come to London, Howard had been naïve about a lot of things, but particularly about money. He never had much experience with finance while under his parents’ roof. His mother kept a firm hold on the purse strings and his father was happy enough to let her. In those days, things used to simply arrive or disappear and he’d never had to think for a moment about it.

It was for this reason, mainly, that he’d left home without bringing with him much money at all. He’d simply taken what small amount of coinage there was to take and a few five euro notes and that was that. It had not occurred to him to conserve it, nor had he any notion of what constituted a fair or reasonable price, so he had spent a bit prolifically when he’d arrived without really realizing.

It was not long, therefore, before his reserves began to dwindle and he was forced to learn the importance of both economy and employment. It had always been his design in settling in London to perform in the Symphony, but auditions for that august assembly were far and few between. He had accepted almost at once that he would need to work in a theater or music hall for a time. He hadn’t realized that his nerves would prove such an impediment to this goal. 

When his first two options failed him, he’d fallen back on the one asset that he possessed: his education.

He still dreamt occasionally that he was walking the narrow paths amongst the oak trees and grand stone buildings of Christminster, still learning precisely how ill-qualified he was for the destiny his parents had in mind for him. He considered his education the secondary achievement of that time. The primary had been a greater awareness of himself, of his desires, of the sort of man he was and the sort of man he was prepared to be. 

He referred, of course, to his inclinations for other men. He’d suspected that he was not like the other boys in his village long before he understood precisely what it was he was feeling when he idolized Lord Nookah’s young son, what it was that he wanted when he’d fantasized about Tommy’s strong hands closing on his waist for _some reason_. 

Of course, he’d never been involved in any _liaisons_ himself, but he’d seen things, and heard things, and it had been like having spectacles forced over his eyes and finally being able to read the text imprinted on his own heart. His understanding did not lead to the shame it probably should have.

He was what he was. He did not see that he had ever been given a choice about it. While he hated himself for his snappish temper, for his less than brave disposition, and for a hundred other personal failings, he did not hate himself for desiring what he did. University given him that, too. The knowledge that he wasn’t alone. That there were other men like him, and that they, like he, were not any more inclined to be wicked than the average person.

Howard was nothing if not a free-thinker. To him, it was society who had got it wrong, who had criminalized something that which should not have been criminalized, and while he lived in fear of discovery, he did not live in ignorance, or in shame.

He’d entered university with his life laid neatly before him and left with an understanding that his destiny could never be neat, or easy, and he’d accepted it.

In addition to his self-knowledge, he’d also gained a mastery of French, Italian, and German, a smattering of Russian, the ability to read Latin and a bit of Greek, and a more than healthy understanding of literature, mathematics, and theology. He was ideally positioned, therefore, to be a tutor. 

It was this occupation that he then tried to gain for himself _temporarily_ until he could secure a position in his desired field. Unfortunately, he had come with no references, and, unwilling to try the connections he had, he’d been forced to apply for a position out of the paper. 

Like so many things in his life, it had seemed lucky at the time that there was an opening for him to apply to in such a manner, but he soon learned better.

He was not pleased, therefore, as he made the long walk to Mayfair, as the streets gradually became grander and more fashionable, as he passed through Hanover Square, aware of a large brick home on the northeast side of the green in a way he was not aware of the others, as he dodged around the expansive perimeter of an old woman’s hat, scuttled past a gentleman with a monocle the size of a cantaloupe strapped around his head, and otherwise tried to make himself as unobtrusive as possible amongst the wealthy and great.

He stood for a long while across the way from his destination. The pillars, the windows, the imposing door, the whole opulent front of the Brook Street townhouse had the appearance of having its nose high in the air. 

He wished there was another option, but there wasn’t.

Through either the perverse desire to punish him, or the perverse desire to watch him debase himself, Howard knew that he would _always_ have a job in that particular townhouse, no matter how many times he walked away from it. The last time had made the third time. Howard had promised himself that it was going to be the last time.

It should have been the last time.

He waffled, wondering if he was really about to do what he had gone there to do. He stood so long, in fact, that he began to attract comment, at least from one particularly snide gentleman who had the nerve to suggest in the loudest whisper Howard had ever heard, that Howard must be a pederast.

As much to prove that he had a purpose for being in the neighborhood as anything, Howard crossed the street.

As a gentleman, he was permitted to use the main entrance and it was this that he approached with a growing sense of dread and self-loathing. He stood upon the threshold and took his hat in his hand and rang the bell.

It was a moment before anyone came for him. Eventually a simply but elegantly dressed woman opened the door. She was a woman somewhere around Howard’s age, with a great deal of rich, dark hair swept away from her face in a manner that was practical rather than fashionable. Keys hung upon a chain at her hip and she had every appearance of being a highly respectable woman. She peered at him through her silver-rimmed spectacles and looked him over with a puzzled expression on her face, “May I help you?”

So it began. “Hello, Mrs. Gideon.”

“How do you know my name?” asked Mrs. Gideon, greatly surprised.

“It’s me. Howard. Howard Moon? Dixon’s... tutor.”

“Dixon’s tutor?” she asked. 

“Yes.”

“Dixon is between tutors at the moment.”

“Yes, I thought maybe he would be,” _since he’s the spawn of Satan himself_ , “I had hoped to speak to Sir Dixon to inquire about the opening.”

“Ah, so you’re new,” said Mrs. Gideon.

“No. No, I used to work here. You know me.”

“Are you sure?”

“Quite sure, yes.”

Mrs. Gideon’s face contracted as though she were trying to puzzle through an impossible conundrum. Howard imagined her trying to work out how many cats she would need to build a functioning horse, what to name it, and how to explain its abundance of eyes and patchwork coloring when people inevitably asked in a way that didn’t make her sound insane. Eventually, her attempt to place him met with the same success it always did. She gave Howard an uncertain smile, “Shall I see if the master is available to receive you Mr...?”

“Moon. Howard Moon.”

“Moon?” she repeated, uneasily.

“Yes. Like the thing in the sky.”

“The sun?”

“No, at night. The...” _sod it_. Howard shook his head. “Howard Moon.”

Mrs. Gideon repeated his name once, Howard nodded, she smiled and showed him into the foyer to wait.

It was, needless to say, a massive anteroom. The whole of the parlor, dining room and hallway from the rooming house could have easily fitted inside it, with room, in addition, for the second floor. The chamber was open, with two identical semi-circular staircases descending from a balcony down to the black and white tiled marble floor. A chandelier hung from the ceiling and sparkled in the daylight that flowed through large windows at the front.

A variety of exotic jungle plants were potted at intervals under gilt-framed paintings and were interspersed with vases, curios, and other items that spoke of far distant travels to exotic parts of the world. 

It was only what one would expect inside the home of Sir Dixon Bainbridge, legendary explorer. His portrait hung in a place of primacy in the hall, his heavy-lidded eyes, fleshy cheeks, and curly hair all overwhelmed by the massive curling moustache he’d apparently worn since he’d come out of the womb.

He was the sort of man that people looked up to, the sort of person Howard had once looked up to. He remembered, in fact, reading some of Sir Dixon’s descriptions of animals in issues of _The Global Explorer_ and being impressed with the man’s exciting prose, the tales of encounters with rhinos, artic wolves, flamingoes, lions, and capuchins; each more harrowing than the last.

Howard had thought that he would like Sir Dixon when he met him, had thought that, perhaps, he might impress him with his own not inconsiderable abilities as a storyteller.

Sheer, bloody naiveté. 

Mrs. Gideon returned in due course. “Mr.,” she hesitated, “Moon? Please follow me.”

She guided Howard through several more highly modern and exquisitely decorated chambers that would have impressed him had he not been well-familiar with them already. He was at last admitted into a positively cavernous study, with shelves upon shelves of leather-bound tomes and maps, cabinets chock-a-block with a collection of antique spy glasses, sextants, and compasses; all arranged around grand and imposing pieces of furniture.

There, too, were all the grim trophies of Sir Dixon’s adventures; glass-eyed lions, antelope skins, splay-legged and menacingly posed tiger prawns, criminally inanimate exotic birds; all dead. That was something the descriptions never included. Just how many of the wonderous, beautiful creatures Sir Dixon had encountered he’d subsequently exterminated.

Every creature was posed at its fiercest, positioned as though ready to attack at any moment.

Hunched over his massive mahogany desk sat Sir Dixon. He took no notice of Howard or Mrs. Gideon. His focus was wholly dedicated to the piece of parchment he held. Mrs. Gideon deposited Howard at the corner of this desk and then curtsied to Sir Dixon and quit the room, shutting the door behind her.

Howard waited to be acknowledged. He would wait, he knew, for a jolly long time for this acknowledgment to take place. Sir Dixon liked to make people sweat. 

Sir Dixon took a magnifying glass out of his desk and applied it to the parchment. Howard glanced down. 

The parchment was covered with strange symbols, doubtlessly a relic of some ancient culture Sir Dixon had helped to discover. Unable to divine any meaning from the script, Howard lost interest in it and sought another focus for his attention. He found one just on the other side of the desk.

A violin was turned upside down in its instrument case so that its strange maker’s mark was on full display. 

It was unusual to see such an object in the study. Sir Dixon was not, so far as Howard knew, musical. His wife might once have been (the house was equipped with an impressive music room) but Lady Bainbridge had died some years ago, and little Dixon was less musical than a fart. Howard supposed that it was only intended to be a collectible, then.

The thing was probably priceless. Sir Dixon would shut it up in a display case and all his rich friends would come over and gawp at it. Whatever music it could make would be trapped behind glass, effectively silenced just so that it could serve as proof of what an illustrious person Sir Dixon was. The man’s whole life seemed based on the acquisition and destruction of that which should only have been free.

It was ten minutes, or thereabouts, before Sir Dixon finally set down his magnifying glass and parchment. He looked up at Howard and seemed to take an immediate dislike to where his eyes were directed. He snapped his fingers, “Just what the hell do you think you’re looking at, Moon?”

“Nothing, sir. Sorry, sir.”

“Damned right you’re sorry, you pathetic arse. Now, _avert your gaze,_ damn you. 

Howard dutifully stared at the floor.

Sir Dixon chuckled. “So. Back again, eh?”

Howard swallowed down his limited reserves of pride. “Yes, sir.”

“Ha, of course you are. Do you know what I see when I look at you, Moon?”

Howard tried not to shrink in on himself, but he shrank down anyway. “No, sir.”

“A loser,” said Sir Dixon, drawing out the end of the word for a good three seconds before at last letting it go. He grabbed his pipe from the top of his desk, lit it, and tucked it between his teeth. “Anything to say to that Moon?” he asked.

“No.”

He gave Howard a once over, “Good,” Sir Dixon said. “Yes, very good. I like a man who knows what he’s worth. You know what you’re worth, Moon, don’t you?”

“I—”

“Dog shit.” Sir Dixon cackled at this statement, but his merriment was thin. “But, seriously Moon,” he said, taking the pipe from his mouth and pointing at Howard with it, “I’d like to hear you say it. What are you worth?”

Howard bit his bottom lip, determined _not_ to say it, but Sir Dixon was staring at him, and Howard really needed his job back. He slouched even lower, “Dog...”

“Louder, please.”

“Dog shit.”

“Dog shit, what?”

“Dog shit, _sir_.”

Sir Dixon smiled. “Yes, that’s right. And what should I pay dog shit, do you think Moon?”

In the end, Howard had to agree, dog shit was not worth much at all.

***** 

Success was a relative term. He had, in the end, secured his position once again. At a reduction in wages. The consequences of this reduction would put him very firmly behind on rent, but he would have at least _something_ for Mr. Naboo. Perhaps, it might be enough to keep him housed through the end of the next month.

When he arrived home, he was in the lowest of spirits, unable to think of meeting with anyone, let alone the always effervescent Mr. Noir, but he was spared. The house, it seemed, was empty, and Howard had a need for something greater than himself.

The upright greeted him, same as always, against the parlor wall, the pile of music books to the side, the gas lamp over it dark. Howard didn’t bother with the gaslight or with the sheet music. The dark suited his mood and he didn’t need to see notes or keys in any case. They were to him as his own hands.

He played. He played through every piece he knew, played through every variation on every emotion he’d ever felt, until he spoke them each by name in the only language fluent enough to express them. The 3rd Movement of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata for his anger, Mendelssohn’s slow, doleful Venetian Boat Song for his sadness, Saint-Saëns’ Une nuit a Lisbonne when he came at last to something like tranquility; then he played _his_ music, let himself fall over the edge until he touched the foreign shores of his own design, traveled through dissonance and harmony the whole length and breadth of the black and white keys, until he had sealed up the rot that was eating at his heart, patched it until he could breathe again without regret, and when that was done, he staggered up on his feet like a man drunk and went to bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More links, if you'd like them!
> 
> [Beethoven- Moonlight Sonata 3rd Movement](https://youtu.be/XUzwdBQDzxw)
> 
> [Mendelssohn- Venetian Boat Song Op.30 no.6 in F sharp Minor](https://youtu.be/Re-eu9q_yUU)
> 
> [Saint-Saëns - Une nuit à Lisbonne](https://youtu.be/16xSutL3HM0)
> 
>   
> Also, Christminster is a fictionalized version of Oxford that I got off Thomas Hardy from _Jude the Obscure_.


	6. Satsumas

For a time, life fell into a routine. Howard went to Brook Street, he came home. If he was alone, he played. If he was not, he commiserated with Mr. Noir about the adequate but rather dismal (and bizarrely fur-filled) meals Mr. Naboo provided them with, or talked to him about music, or pretended to read while Mr. Noir did his best to distract him. 

He tried to forget what he’d overheard in Mr. Naboo’s study. He tried to pretend that he wasn’t growing more and more infatuated with his housemate.

He met with limited success in both of these endeavors.

Every foggy, damp night refreshed Howard’s memory of the one, and every single minute spent with Mr. Noir served to reinforce the other. Howard could do nothing about the weather, which, typically for October was more often than not damp and foggy, but he should have been able to do _something_ to prevent himself from the other. Yet, he plainly wasn’t.

That was made obvious by his agreement to a scheme that found him loitering in the foyer of the rooming house when he really should have departed for Mayfair ten minutes previous, but how was he meant to say _no_ when Mr. Noir had asked if Howard would mind his company for part of his journey? _Would you mind…?_ He’d actually phrased it that way.

Of course Howard didn’t _mind_. He was going to make himself late over _how little he minded_ , when all he really had to cling to in life was his religious adherence to punctuality. 

Howard heard a creak at the top of the stairs and turned, ready with a remonstrance about the time, but the sight before him scrambled his thoughts. “That’s what you’re wearing?” 

Mr. Noir looked down at himself, “Yeah. What’s the matter? Don’t you like it?”

 _That_ was certainly not the issue. Howard _liked it_ just fine. The lavender suit, deep purple waistcoat, and black ascot all became Mr. Noir very well indeed. The issue might more correctly be understood if one was to presume that Howard liked it rather too much.

Howard fixed his eyes on the photograph of a small spaniel on the wall and did not look at Mr. Noir. “Is everything you own such an absurd color?”

Mr. Noir snorted, “Mostly, yeah. I can change, if you like.”

Howard scowled, “No, it took you long enough to dress the first time. Put your coat on so we can leave.”

“Alright, keep your boots on,” Mr. Noir said as he trespassed into Howard’s line of vision. Howard found himself compelled to study the newel post. 

Mr. Noir shrugged into his charcoal chesterfield and started trying on hats in the hall mirror. Howard couldn’t stop himself from looking at him, unobserved as he was, behind Mr. Noir’s back. 

God, his hair. Even bound it was _luxuriant_. 

Mr. Noir plucked a topper with a plum colored ribbon off the shelf and put it on, adjusting the angle of it several times, before he seemed satisfied. He turned toward Howard, “What’d you think?” 

It was absurd how fetching he looked.

“I think you spend more time looking at yourself in the mirror than bleeding Narcissus,” Howard said. “Could we go now, please?”

Mr. Noir rolled his eyes and followed Howard out the door.

Howard fixed his gaze firmly ahead of himself as they walked. Even though he had agreed to Mr. Noir's company, and had even been a bit pleased when he'd offered it, he found himself trying his best to pretend that Mr. Noir was not with him at all. A thing far easier said than done.

Mr. Noir was always talking, always laughing, always dragging Howard onto absurd sidelines of conversation. Howard tried to focus on the buildings around them, tried to read the signs over shop windows, to count the pavements they walked over, only to find his eyes drawn always to his left. Mr. Noir would catch him and smile and then Howard would divert his attention toward a passing carriage, or wherever he could send it, so that he was not understood to be gaping at his companion.

He wanted to gape. Christ, the sight of him. The joyful, hopping, jigging sight of him. He was so much _himself_. How could anyone be so much themself?

If Mr. Noir was at all put out by Howard’s attempts to ignore him, he did not show it. There was no cease to his conversation. It flowed like a geyser. He talked of the music hall (the stage manager, a Mr. Fossil, insisted he’d been in the Crimea, even though he didn’t look a day over thirty), then moved onto his personal recommendations for Howard to improve his appearance (beards were well fashionable and he thought Howard would look well with one, particularly with his hair a bit long as it was), and on and on seemingly forever until they’d ended up where they often did, on the topic of music.

“That is an utterly asinine opinion, you do realize that, don’t you?” Howard asked him, now counting each intersection they passed like a prisoner marking off the days he’d spent in his cell.

Mr. Noir laughed. “I’m just saying, there’s no point to all that old-fashioned rot.”

“Mozart is not _rot_. _Don Giovanni_ is a masterpiece, musically and thematically. A man undone by his own vices,” Howard carefully did not consider his own vices, “and punished accordingly is a lesson that we all would do well to remember.”

“Yeah, but ain’t Mozart the bloke who drank himself to death and wrote that tune about tonguing people up the arse?”

Howard heard someone nearby gasp, he himself flushed, “Heaven’s sake, keep your voice down! That sort of talk is _indecent_.”

Mr. Noir laughed, “Isn’t he, though?”

“He might have been… somewhat troubled, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t brilliant. And his personal life doesn’t invalidate the piece. And Don Giovanni is a berk. He deserves everything he gets.”

“Alright, but I still don’t understand how some morality tale in another bleeding language possibly compare to something as brilliant as _Pinafore_.”

“ _Don Giovanni_ isn’t a morality tale it’s… bloody hell, you can’t seriously wish to compare _Don Giovanni_ to _The H.M.S. Pinafore_!”

“Why not?”

“Because one is art the other is… populist nonsense!”

“It’s satire,” Mr. Noir said sagely. “Anyway, you’ve never seen it, have you? You might like it.”

“I have heard rather enough of it, thanks to you, and I should say I have no desire to see it, or any of their other little productions.”

“Gilbert and Sullivan are geniuses.”

“You throw that term about _very loosely_.”

“I’m a loose sort of bloke,” Mr. Noir said with a saucy smile. All of his smiles were _saucy_ , damn him. 

Mr. Noir stopped, “Hey, you want an orange?” 

Only then did Howard notice the costermonger they’d stopped in front of. Apples, pears, and other fruits were laid out on his cart and he was shouting the list of produce he had for sale at such a volume that Howard was a little surprised that the noise of him had faded into the background.

“Can’t. I only have enough money for the omnibus,” he said.

Strictly speaking, this was untrue. In reality, he did not even have enough for the omnibus. Every penny he spent was a penny that he needed for Mr. Naboo. The unhappy truth of his dismal finances, however, did not stop Mayfair from being inconveniently far away from Dalston to travel to on foot. Walking to Fleet Street was bad enough.

Mr. Noir canted his head, “If I get one, though, you want some?”

Howard scarcely knew how to respond to this extraordinary offer. Eventually, he sneered. “I’m not sharing food with you. Look at the state of your hands.”

Mr. Noir did as Howard bade him and examined his hands, which were, to all appearances, perfectly well-groomed and clean. Some might have even called them immaculate. “What’s wrong with me hands?”

“I don’t suppose you _would_ know about germ theory,” Howard said in as quelling and haughty a manner as possible. 

“Germ theory?”

“Yes,” Howard said, “Little invisible creatures that infest our bodies like mice, if you give them the chance.”

Mr. Noir rolled his eyes, “And my hands are covered in these invisible mice? Think I’d feel that.”

“They’re not the _size_ of mice; they’re much smaller.”

“What, like,” Mr. Noir thought for a moment, “baby mice?”

“No. Smaller than that. Microscopic.”

“What?”

“Microscopic. Only able to be observed through a microscope.”

“I think you mean a telescope and those are for stars, which look small, yeah? But they’re actually supposed to be really big. So, my hands can’t be covered in them.”

“You are missing the point entirely. This is new science which—”

“I’m having an orange,” Mr. Noir said, his hip bumping to the side. “You want some or not?”

Howard sighed and struggled to remember why he had agreed to this torture. “Yeah. I’ll have a bit.”

“Great.”

Mr. Noir went over to the costermonger and, rather than completing a simple purchase, he appeared to begin a conversation. Of course he would. Relentlessly friendly, that was what he was.

Howard would do well to remember that. Mr. Noir didn’t necessarily have to like him to wish to accompany him places and chatter at him all day long. He talked to _anyone_. He laughed and smiled for anyone. There was nothing to suggest that Howard was special to him in any way.

Howard sighed. He was going to be late. Very late. 

Had he enough money for the underground, or more money yet to hire a handsome, it would not have been so bad, but since he had to rely on the omnibuses, Howard was at a distinct disadvantage when it came to punctuality. In general, omnibuses were a somewhat shocking way to attempt to travel. 

Howard did mean to say ‘attempt’ for he’d seen more than one person take a tumble from the roof of an omnibus, if the horses moved unexpectedly, or the driver took too sharp a turn at speed. In addition to the hazards they presented, the omnibuses often did not go where one needed them to. They might go in the general direction toward which one needed to travel, but then leave one off without another omnibus to hop on for several more miles of walking. 

Howard couldn’t help but feel that there was a much more sensible way to organize them if only someone were to be properly put to the task, and, were he offered a crack at it, he thought that he should have liked to try, but, seeing as he was but a humble passenger, he merely informed the drivers of the omnibuses of his opinions, and they, in turn, promised to _take it under advisement_ , which obviously they never actually did, because if they had, the whole thing would have been sorted by now.

Preoccupied as he was with the failings of the omnibus ‘system’, he was taken quite off guard by Mr. Noir shouting, “Catch!” 

Howard turned, saw a small orange flying directly at him. “Gah!” he exclaimed, turning to avoid the citrus missile too late. It hit him on the chest with a soft squelch and then rolled onto the ground.

Mr. Noir trotted over to the little orange and stooped down to pick it up, “What’d you do that for?” 

“You _threw it at me!_ ”

“You were supposed to catch it,” Mr. Noir insisted. He scooped it up and turned it over in his hand, “It’s burst,” he said in dismay. He stood and handed Howard a second of the small oranges.

Howard’s hand could have swallowed the whole thing. “What the hell is it, anyway? This is the smallest orange I’ve ever seen in my life.”

“It’s a satsuma,” Mr. Noir said. “Fruit seller said they were easier to peel and don’t have any seeds. Thought I’d like to try it.”

“What are you, a child? You’ve been taken in. This is some deformed orange that you’ve had pawned off on you with a bit of fast talk. It’s probably diseased.”

Mr. Noir smirked, “With the tiny mice?”

Howard shot him a very level look. 

Mr. Noir shrugged and started wiping his ‘ _satsuma_ ’ with his kerchief.

“You aren’t going to eat that, are you?”

“Course I am.”

“My God. Did you not hear a word I said about germ theory? That one is most definitely covered in all sorts of—It was in the street!”

Mr. Noir raised a brow at him. “I’m eating it. Unless you keep talking and force me to chuck it at you again.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

The satsuma pinged off Howard’s face. Howard reached into his pocket and retrieved his kerchief. He opened it with a snap of his wrist and wiped his face while Mr. Noir giggled. Howard replaced his handkerchief and weighed the satsuma that was in his hand. 

Mr. Noir caught the menace in Howard’s eyes, “Don’t. If you ruin my coat, I’ll—” Howard coiled his arm. Mr. Noir yelped a laugh and shouted, “No!” in protest just as Howard lobbed the satsuma at him. He spun and the satsuma missed him completely. 

It didn’t, however, miss a large and rather doughy woman who was standing behind him. Her, it hit square in the back of the head.

The woman spun round, her eyes wide with fury, and immediately apprehended Howard (who stood with his eyes wide and his mouth gaping at this unintended consequence of his retaliation). She pointed at him.

 _“Sir!”_ she exclaimed. She raised her parasol and advanced toward Howard. He grimaced and braced for the blow.

Mr. Noir grabbed his arm, “Come on, Howard! Run!” he tugged at Howard, dragging him for a few steps until Howard realized that Mr. Noir’s advice on this subject was incredibly sensible. He got his feet under him, and then they ran together.

“Stop you!” the woman yelled after them, the sound of her boots beating a staccato rhythm behind them.

Howard expected at any moment to be apprehended by some avenging gentleman looking to assist the poor lady in her quest for vengeance, but no one interfered as Mr. Noir led him speedily away, cutting down a side street and then up a larger thoroughfare before he at last pulled Howard into an alley and skidded to a stop.

Howard leaned against the wall and tried to catch his breath. He assumed Mr. Noir was doing the same, but then, he realized the other man’s erratic breathing was not simply breathing, it was _laughter_. Howard stared at him.

“You’re mental,” Howard accused.

Mr. Noir wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, “Me? You’re the one that pelted that old lady with a satsuma. What were you thinking?”

“You started it! You… you could’ve got us kicked out!”

Mr. Noir erupted in fresh giggles, “Kicked out? Of the street?”

“You know what I mean! Taken by the police! Arrested!”

“Yeah, we’d have ended up in the dock for sure,” Mr. Noir said sardonically. He magicked another satsuma out of his pocket and started peeling it as though nothing could have ruffled him less than a madcap sprint away from a vindictive dowager. “I meant to give you a whole one, but you can still have a bit of this one, if you’re interested.”

Howard wiped his face with his hand, removed his hat and combed back the stray strands of hair that had fallen across his forehead. “I’m going to be horrifically late. They’ll sack me. Oh Christ, what if they sack me?”

Mr. Noir snorted. “Thought you hated your job?”

“That doesn’t mean I want to be _sacked_!”

“They’re not going to sack you. Just come up with an excuse.” Mr. Noir’s eyes lit suddenly, “Tell them you got waylaid by some French leopards that needed you to help them tie their cravats before a big meeting at the embassy. They mistook you for a valet, see, because you were shaving a python, who’d waylaid you first, on account of his needing someone with hands to do up his waistcoat, and then he offered you three euros if you finished the rest of his toilette for him and since you couldn’t turn down that sort of money, you had to do it. Then tell them if they want you there on time, they should give you a raise. That way, if they don’t sack you, they’ll give you some more money to deal with little Dickhead, or whatever his name is.”

“Dixon,” Howard corrected. “My God, you’re insane.” 

It started somewhere behind Howard’s stomach and rumbled outward until he couldn’t hold it back. He laughed. “Absolutely mad.”

Mr. Noir grinned, “You’re the one who tried to assassinate a lady with a satsuma.”

“Satsuma,” Howard echoed, his laughter now uncontrollable. “My God, did you see her face? I thought she’d kill me.”

“Yeah, I think she meant to.” 

Howard wiped his eyes. They stood smiling at one another for a long moment.

Mr. Noir discarded the peel that was in his hand and popped a segment of satsuma into his mouth. His lips were pink and curved into a smile, he had taken on a flush from their run and said flush set off his eyes in a way that any girl would have happily spent an hour abusing her cheeks to replicate. All of this against the purples and greys of his apparel…

Orange and cream, pink, purple and grey, he was beautiful as the mackerel sky of a summer dawn.

Beautiful didn’t cover the bleeding half of it. He was gorgeous.

Mr. Noir swallowed. “It’s good, by the by,” he said, proffering half of the tiny fruit toward him. “You sure you don’t want any?”

He was going to say no. He full well _meant_ to say no. 

He didn’t say no. “Sure. Sod it. Why not?”

Mr. Noir’s fingers brushed Howard’s palm as he laid the satsuma in his hand.

He hadn’t lied. It was good.


	7. A Night Out

“You look like hell,” Mr. Noir said two nights following what Howard now thought of as _the satsuma incident_.

Howard was leaning back on the sofa with his arm draped over his eyes, indulging himself in a favored post-Brook Street fantasy, that of being dead and buried in a churchyard with a crowd of mourners gathered around him, bemoaning his untimely death at the hands of injustice. He rather liked the thought that something as abstract and faceless as _injustice_ could do him in. It suited his artistic sensibilities.

He lifted his arm off his face and peered up at Mr. Noir. 

“Cheers,” Howard said. 

“The kid still taking it out of you?” Mr. Noir asked.

The answer to this question, was, of course, yes. 

Rather than, what he now recognized, would indeed have been the _mercy_ of being fired for his tardiness, Howard’s absence hadn’t even been noted on the day of _the satsuma incident_. He’d not even faced a rebuke. No one had cared, so his employment continued. He was glad, of course, not to be sacked. He’d said so several times to Mr. Noir (and had taken care to emphasize how very near the thing had been and how very much at fault he considered Mr. Noir to be), but he really did hate little Dixon. 

Didn’t do to hate children, he knew, but Howard couldn’t help it. 

Only that afternoon, Dixon had come up with a new means of torture; that of inserting some variation on the word _prick_ at the end of every line of dialog in _Jane Eyre_ whilst reading aloud so that it went a bit like this: “Do you think I am an automaton _you prick_?–a machine without feelings _you prick_? and can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my cup _you thrice-damned prick_? Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless _you bloody prick_? You think wrong, _ya filthy prick!_ –I have as much soul as you,–and full as much heart, _you arse-eating prick_! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you, _you horrible, skulking prick!_ I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh;–it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God’s feet, equal,–as we are _a couple of pricks, dyed in the wool_!”

After this trial on Howard’s patience, he had at last consented to let Dixon take out his book of maps so that they could work on geography, which was, at least, something of an interest to him.

He was under the impression that he was destined to follow in his father’s footsteps and explore the globe. Which, if Howard had anything to do with it, was never going to happen. He’d been teaching the boy the incorrect latitude and longitude lines for months now. Good luck finding your way around the world with that sort of misinformation brewing in your brain. Yes sir, little Dixon was going to head out for India and end up in Hungary. That would show him. 

Furtive Chinese burns now; long-range vengeance later. Howard just had to be patient.

“Let’s not mention him, please.”

“Alright,” Mr. Noir said. He sat down on the sofa to Howard’s right. “You should come out tonight.”

“No,” Howard returned to the dark cave provided by his elbow, “I shouldn’t.”

“Why not? You can get top-heavy, forget some of your troubles,” Mr. Noir was smiling slightly when Howard aimed a pointed glare at him for suggesting that he might _forget_ even one of his troubles, “We could find you a girl to help you get over some of,” Mr. Noir said, his hand sweeping over Howard as though encompassing his whole sorry person, “you know. Whatever this is.”

Howard made a face at the mention of finding a _girl_. “Thank you for the invitation, but no. I don’t want to do anything but lie here and think about death. _The stroke of death is as a lover’s pinch, which hurts and is desired._ ”

“What?”

“Shakespeare. He got it, didn’t he?” Howard sat up, poised his hands in the air and let them move as though snatching words from the air as he said, “ _To die, to sleep – to sleep – perchance to dream: aye, there’s the rub, for in that sleep of death what dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal_ —”

“Yeah, alright. That’s enough of that,” Mr. Noir said. “You’re coming with me.”

“I don’t want to.”

“I _don’t care_. Look, Leroy’s in Shropshire and I’m bored and you’re just lying about, draped over the sofa like Isabella Linton, dying of low spirits or whatever.”

“Like _Isabella_ —”

“That’s right, you sad-arse.” 

Howard was nearly spurred to action by the comparison, but, of course, he had several very rational objections to going out that could not be altered by any amount of pointed teasing. Primary amongst these was that Mr. Noir, Howard, and inebriation should never, ever in any way have combined. He could not simply say _that_ , however, so he was forced to admit the other objection he had to going out. He sighed, “I haven’t… I haven’t got any money.”

Mr. Noir laughed, “Yeah, and you ain’t been out with Vince Noir before, have you? You don’t worry about the money, alright?”

“You aren’t going to pay for me,” Howard said firmly. He’d accepted the satsuma and that had been bad enough. He wasn’t about to be treated to a night on the town by someone who, in spite of present circumstances, was not Howard’s social equal.

“No, I’m not,” Mr. Noir confirmed lightly. He grinned, “Look, just trust me, yeah? We’re going to go out, we’re going to have a good time, and, provided you follow my lead, neither of us are going to pay for a thing.”

Howard could hardly believe that this would be so, but he and the rooming house would probably part company sooner rather than later. Vince would be lost to him. He could control himself. He’d done so effectively the entirety of his life, one more night would not overcome him.

He tossed up a careless hand and nodded his assent.

******

He was magic. 

Howard had concluded somewhere between his third and… seventh?... glass of free gin that Vince Noir was fucking magic.

Everywhere they went, _someone_ knew him. Whether from his performances on stage, or from a chance meeting at a cobbler’s, or through a mate of a mate, people recognized him. People wanted to _talk_ to him, and Vince had words enough for everyone and all.

Howard would have found it exhausting, all of those people talking to him, pulling him this way and that, but Vince took to it like a duck in a pond, like he was in his natural environment. He chatted and joked and seemed so genuinely pleased to see everyone, anyone, who wanted to see him. 

He never _asked_ anyone for anything, and yet, somehow, people were compelled to buy him food, or drink, as little tokens of appreciation for his attention. These gifts were given in such abundance that no one noticed when Vince started passing them, wordlessly, to Howard.

Funnily enough, it had been an article by Sir Dixon Bainbridge that had informed Howard of the Oxpecker, a tiny bird that lived off the parasites that clung to the backs of elephants and the like. Howard felt like that bird. He was just a drab, unnoticed hanger-on. Vince was so utterly immense that he was able to provide all the sustenance Howard could need, and he did it as though it were somehow beneficial to him, to slip Howard drinks, or a hand pie, or a bowl of stew.

It would have been easy, and natural, Howard thought, if Vince had, at some point, started to forget him. After all, Howard was innately taciturn and not completely comfortable with new people, but Vince never did. His conversation was directed, first and foremost toward Howard. He always turned to Howard, if he made a joke, or said something clever, as though it were Howard’s reaction he wanted to see, as though, for some reason, Howard’s opinion mattered more than anyone else’s.

That Howard’s eyes constantly drifted toward Vince and that he had long since stopped correcting them was something he blamed on the drink and the lack of another anchor in a sea of unfamiliar faces. That he did not resume his long habit of waltzing his eyes away from Vince’s face if they lingered there too long once they were alone at home, was less simple to excuse.

“You’re incredible,” Howard slurred, sipping now a glass of brandy that Vince had dug out of a cabinet underneath the bookcase. “Like a… a thing that people like. A puppy.”

Vince’s arm was stretched across the back of the sofa, his legs out in front of him. His hat was still perched atop his head, though it sat at a slant, half-covering his eyes. He was the very picture of louche relaxation as his head turned sleepily toward Howard, “A puppy?” he asked.

“Yes,” Howard said, “a puppy. All friendly and yappy, like. S’mazing.”

Vince touched the rim of his hat and then took it off. He set it down on the floor, “I think you’re gone properly mops and brooms, Howard.”

Howard was drunk and full of decent hot food, and, just as Vince had said, he’d not paid a single penny for any of it. “I am,” he confirmed, seeing no reason to deny it. 

The room was warm (Vince having insisted that they should have a fire when they got home) and inebriation had rendered the sofa uncommonly comfortable. The parlor looked pretty in the firelight, gold and shadow happily jumping across every surface; the walls, the rug, the upright... Vince’s face.

All things considered, Howard was very nearly content.

“Feel better?” Vince asked him after a moment of silence.

Howard shrugged, the motion hunching him further into his own corner of the sofa. He sat forward out of it, “Sort of. M’not thinking, anyway. Or, least, not about… things. Normal things.”

“What abnormal things are you thinking about?” Vince asked. The firelight caught in his blue eyes, setting them aglow, the one side of his face illuminated and the other in shade, both sides intensely lovely. Howard’s eyes drifted down to his neck, to the gap between Vince’s ear and his collar, where his hair was gathered back. He refocused more properly on Vince’s face. 

Vince was looking at Howard, a teasing smile upon his lips.

A smile that Howard wanted to…

He remembered himself and looked at the piano. “That’s a broad question.”

“It’s not that broad. Go on. Just give me a little sip of old Howard Moon’s brain milk.”

Howard sniffed, “You couldn’t handle a sip, sir. No, the workings of my mind are too powerful for the likes of you.”

“That so?”

“Oh, yes. You see, Vince, I have the heart of a poet, the mind of a philosopher, and the soul of a… cabinet maker. You take a sip of that, you’ll be reeling. You’ll never recover. Just a taste and _whua_ there goes your whole consciousness straight out the window. You’d be a husk, an empty tortoise shell, if you got a lap of the nutrient-rich inner-workings of my mind, yes, sir.”

Vince laughed, “Well, alright, how ‘bout a gleaning? The little bits you aren’t going to use anyway. Surely there’s something in there I could handle?”

“I don’t think so, little man. Even the tiniest bits of my unused thoughts are too dangerous. They’re prowling tigers that would shred you to bits.”

“I can handle ‘em. I can talk to animals, you know.” Howard snorted. “I can!” Vince insisted, giggling. “I’ve been able to since I was little. Point is, I know how to handle a tiger.”

“Metaphorical tigers?”

“Any tigers you like,” Vince said. Howard stole a glance at him, just to confirm what he already knew. He had yet to take his eyes off Howard. His face wore an expression that defied interpretation. 

“I don’t understand why on earth would you possibly care…” Howard shook his head and started over. “What do you care what I think for?”

“Call it curiosity,” Vince said, now playing with the end of his hair.

Howard watched, for perhaps too long, the circular, curling motion of Vince’s finger, before he remembered again that he ought not be watching him. He fixed his gaze on the upright. “Really?” he asked, taking a sip of brandy.

“Sure. I’ve never met anyone like you. I don’t know if you know this, but you’re a bit strange.” Howard huffed, and Vince laughed, “In a good way,” he continued. “For instance, you keep looking at that piano like you want to have it in a back alley.”

“I don’t.” 

“Yes, you do.”

Howard crossed his arms over his chest and spilled a little brandy on his sleeve, “Shit,” he mumbled, dabbing at himself with his other sleeve.

Vince handed him over a kerchief, “Properly pissed you are. Saying nice things, swearing, spilling drinks. Calling me my Christian name. Barely recognize you. Next thing I know, you’ll actually start playing that piano instead of just staring at it with your shifty little eyes all lustful an’ desperate.”

Howard fixed Vince—Mr. Noir with a glare, “I don’t look at the piano like… like a _paramour_.”

Mr. Noir’s bottom lip tucked between his teeth. “Yeah, you do.” The firelight caught on the moistened surface of his lips as he added, “You should just have at it if you want to. I’m sure it wants you to. Can’t you hear it? Asking why you won’t play it?”

“No.”

“Well, I can hear it, and it does wonder, just like I do, why you don’t let yourself do what you’d like.”

As much as Howard loved music, there was only one thing in that moment that he truly wanted to do. The liquor was making his head swim. He leaned against the back of the sofa and stared up at the ceiling.

“I… just… I just can’t. Play.”

“Can’t?” Mr. Noir asked, his voice soft.

Howard’s eyes traitorously rolled toward him. Mischief had been replaced by something else, something curious and gentle. Howard swallowed, “Can’t.” 

Mr. Noir’s fingers tugged at the ends of his hair, “Howard, you can’t let bad auditions get you down. I think you can play. I have heard you and—”

Howard sat bolt upright, “What?”

“I’ve heard you playing,” Mr. Noir reiterated, his countenance turning to an expression of alarm.

Howard felt the blood draining from his face, felt his pulse go flighty. Just the simple intelligence that someone had _heard him_ was enough to send him into a spiral of panic. “How?” he asked, genuinely baffled. He had always been so careful.

“You didn’t seem to... you were distracted like,” Mr. Noir said. He reached up and brushed back his forelock, then he added in a voice that would have been well-suited to the task of soothing a horse that had been petrified by its own shadow, “I came in one night and… you must not have heard me. I didn’t... I just sat at the top of the stairs and listened for a spell. I had no idea that you could play like you do. It was nice.”

The words were jumbled up in Howard’s head in a disorderly pile. He was sure he could not have heard them correctly. “You… you thought… you liked it?”

Mr. Noir laughed, tension visibly flowing out of him. “Yeah. You’re good, you know? Least as good as Timmy Eighty-Eights.”

Howard didn’t know who Timmy Eighty-Eights was and didn’t care. “You thought I was good?” he asked again, just for clarification.

Mr. Noir looked up at the ceiling. His amused, teasing smile fell back into place. He shifted slightly, so that he faced Howard more fully. The firelight now wholly behind him, his chaotic features were brushed soft by shadow, “Yeah.”

No intelligence could have shocked Howard more. Mr. Noir had heard him, and he’d _liked_ hearing him. He’d thought… “Sorry, you _liked it_?”

Mr. Noir laughed, “Christ, Howard. How much do you need me to say it?”

 _An infinite amount_. He never could have heard the words too much. He was overjoyed with them. He was… he was… he didn’t know what he was.

Mr. Noir was smiling at him and _he’d thought Howard was good_. Howard smiled back at him. He was so near, so close, and so, so beautiful. He was playing with his hair again. Why did it suddenly feel like he and Vince had been looking into one another’s eyes for a very long time? 

A quick double knock sounded at the front door. 

Both he and Mr. Noir looked toward the hallway and then back at one another as though wondering, identically, who on earth could be calling at such an hour.

“Probably for Naboo,” Mr. Noir said, “Sometimes, people don’t know they need to go round the back. I’ll take care of it.”

Howard had been too distracted and comfortable to fall into any remembrances of what he’d heard in Mr. Naboo’s study a week or so previous, yet the knock upon the door instantly recalled to him that night. It was foggy again, with the same curling shadows haunting the streets.

“Wait,” Howard said, lurching to his feet, “You shouldn’t… I mean, what if it’s…”

Something haunted, some mad, unnatural, horrible, inarticulate menace; Howard couldn’t speak, but like a child catching a firefly in a jar, Mr. Noir captured his meaning.

“What? A monster?” he asked incredulously, “I’m sure that it’s just someone looking to get a vibe off the tea leaves or something.”

“I’ll come with you. To the door,” Howard said. His desire, of course, was to ensure that no ill befell Mr. Noir (who _liked hearing him play_ ), being that he was so small and delicate a personage. It was not at all a silly, unfounded wish to avoid being left alone in the parlor.

Mr. Noir received this act of gallant bravery with nothing more than a wry look. Still, he did not object and together, they went out into the hallway.

Mr. Noir pulled open the door.

An anticlimactic sight met them. There was no one there. 

“That’s odd,” Howard said just as Mr. Noir grabbed his arm and pointed down at the ground.

“Look!” he said.

Howard looked. A carpetbag was on their front step. It was of no special description, merely the sort of thing that any working woman might have carried with her, with wooden handles, a snap closure and rough floral-patterned sides. Nevertheless, it was an utterly baffling sight to behold.

A small tag attached to its handle fluttered in the wind. Mr. Noir stooped and reached for it. He flipped it over and, written in scarcely legible scrawl, Howard read the name _Naboo_.

“It is for Naboo,” Mr. Noir said, grabbing the bag by the handles and rising to his feet. “Heavy,” he added, grasping it with both hands, “Crikey, I wonder what the hell is in here.”

“We’re not opening it,” Howard said immediately.

“I didn’t say we should. Jesus, relax, will you? It’s just a carpetbag.”

“A mysterious carpetbag.”

“Whatever,” Mr. Noir said with an eyeroll. He sidled past Howard with the bag. Howard remained near the threshold of the front door. 

Mr. Noir walked down the hall, as though it were merely an ordinary hallway in an ordinary house and then he knocked on Mr. Naboo’s door, as though it were an ordinary door in the ordinary house, and no ill could possibly befall him.

Which, of course, was all true.

Probably.

The door cracked open. Mr. Noir explained the situation and Mr. Naboo’s hand emerged from the narrow gap. He took charge of the carpetbag with a sibilant utterance of _cheers_ then shut his door.

Mr. Noir was left standing thoughtfully outside of it.

He turned toward Howard and with only a single _look_ Howard knew that Mr. Noir knew the secret of the WC, and that, just like Howard had been, he was tempted to use its singular trick to gain a little additional intelligence.

“No,” Howard said at once.

Mr. Noir shifted on his feet and looked toward the floor before he looked back up again, “I ain’t said anything.”

“Well, you don’t need to.”

Mr. Noir rolled his eyes, “Oh, so now you know what I’m thinking?” 

Howard was left to contemplate the peculiar emphasis Mr. Noir seemed to place on the word _now_ in solitude as Mr. Noir pushed past him and began climbing the stairs.

Howard rushed after him and caught up to him just outside the bathroom door, “Don’t,” he said.

“Shh, he’ll rumble us if you make too much noise. Works both ways.” Mr. Noir opened the door and crept inside. He looked back and held the door open in silent invitation. 

Howard was very tempted to turn on his heel and go straight to his own room, shut the door, and go to sleep. He was well-aware that it would be the most sensible course of action, but Mr. Noir’s eyes were sparking with mischief, and he was looking up at Howard with a look of anticipation. 

Reluctantly, Howard stepped inside.


	8. Once More Into the WC

Howard remembered a time, not that long ago, when he’d been warm, comfortable, and drunk by the fireside, and had felt no greater unease than the knowledge that he would very probably have a headache come the next morning.

Now, he felt far soberer than it seemed possible he should, shut up in the chilly bathroom, holding his breath and listening to the collection of voices downstairs with a growing trepidation, feeling, quite firmly, that he wanted no part of what was happening below. Mostly, he wished to leave, yet he feared to do so since he did not want to seem a coward or a _suppressor of sprits_ in front of Mr. Noir, because to him, this was apparently nothing more than a game.

None of the inane ramblings from below seemed to discomfit him in the least. In fact, his excitement only built the longer the men below talked, as though nothing could have been better than the incriminating pronouncements that should have seen the lot of them locked away in Broadmoor. Both his expression and his fidgety tendency to bite at the edges of his fingernails whilst in the throes of heavy contemplation spoke of how utterly enraptured he was with the circumstances. He would occasionally break out of his slightly crouched, leaning stance to look toward Howard and mouth a highlighted phrase at him while they listened, as though Howard might catch his delight like some sort of spiritual diphtheria. 

So far, these phrases had included, _shaman council, perilous urgency_ , and _ballbag_ , the last of which Mr. Noir had repeated with such silently giddy excitement, that Howard could only imagine him as a child opening a grand and unexpected present.

Howard received none of the conversation with anything like the delight evinced by Mr. Noir. All he could do was listen with distaste and a degree of trepidation, for, surely, below were three of the maddest men in England.

For instance, one of them spoke a good deal about something called the crunch, (another mouthed phrase the first time it arose) and the other had responded with some disgusting insinuation about a hexagonal penis that Howard hoped came merely from his own mad fancy rather than the actual possession of said horrifying member.

Howard had very nearly reached his limit when the sound of an opening door was heard. “Dennis!” he of the hexagonal penis exclaimed, “Where you been you wanker? I thought I was going to be late, having to get a lift in the old fashioned since Saboo wouldn’t carpet me.”

Howard was no longer disturbed by such trivialities as perfectly good nouns being turned into clumsy verbs. Abuses of language such as these were mild things compared to the utter lunacy that he had distilled from the rest of the conversation.

“I was trying to persuade Kirk to join us,” said this _Dennis_ in reply, “but to no avail. He is, I’m afraid, on a dark path.” His deep and hearty-voice held an edge of sadness.

“A dark path, Sire?” asked the other, the one that Howard understood to be Mr. Saboo.

“Yes. He walks the depraved path of the teetotaler, preaching his sobriety to all that will listen, never failing to pass judgment upon those who even drink so much as a single mug of breakfast beer.”

“In these days of cholera?” asked Mr. Saboo, aghast.

“I’m afraid so. Even now he is at a temperance meeting.”

“My God.”

Mr. Noir snickered and Howard shushed him. Ever since he’d been told it was possible for them to be heard, he’d become terrified of being caught.

“Can we get down to business?” asked Mr. Naboo. Perhaps he was just as out of patience with all the nonsense as Howard. He certainly didn’t sound amused, nor, indeed, particularly interested in the foolishness of his fellows.

“Yes, of course. Show us your discovery,” Dennis said.

There was a lengthy pause during which Howard was too terrified to attempt to respond to Mr. Noir’s soft whispers, asking what Howard thought it would be. If he thought it was a crab shell that turned into a house? If he thought it was a bell that could open doors? If he thought it was a suit that changed colors? And on and on in this vein, until Howard almost found the collective gasp from below that silenced him a relief.

“This is what I was talking about,” Mr. Naboo said, his voice just as flat as ever. “What you think?”

“The styling... does seem, consistent,” said Dennis. “I am afraid that I never… personally laid eyes on the article.” He made a hum of consideration, “What do you make of the markings, Saboo?”

“The script is high Xoobrian, Sire, though what it says—”

“Aw, let me see it! I learned high Xoobrian in me cradle, I did.”

“The only thing you learned in your cradle, Tony, was how to shit yourself, and as far as I can smell, you’ve yet to outgrow the habit.”

“I have a gift for languages, I’ll have you, know!”

“A gift? Like your gift for breeding dogs, your gift for lawn tennis, and your gift for arranging flowers?”

“Yeah. Just like… those things.”

“You have a gift, Tony. A gift for getting mistaken for a syphilitic ballbag.”

“You nonce! Come here and say that to me tentacles.”

Howard cocked his head, unsure if he’d heard correctly, but then Mr. Noir mouthed _tentacles_ at him and Howard knew that he had heard correctly. A hexagonal penis and tentacles. Would no one come and lock this fellow away?

“Enough! Saboo, show Tony Harrison the amulet.”

“Yeah, let me have a go!”

A sigh rattled up the drainpipe.

“Well, Tony?”

“Eeer… I need me reading glasses. Can’t, erm, read it without… those.”

There was a long silence.

“That’s a pity,” said Dennis. Another weighty silence fell. Dennis continued, “How did you come by this item, Naboo?”

“Client asked for help with it. Seemed like a typical cursed amulet racket. I was all set up to destroy it, yeah? But just as I was getting ready, I got kind of a feeling off it, and I thought, looking at it, it was a bit odd.”

“Naboo, you plum. A weird feeling and a look-over? These are the facts that have caused you to summon us? Well done, Naboo. Really well done,” said Mr. Saboo. “Sounds to me like you’re pissing yourself for nothing.”

“Yeah? Well, I’m no expert, but the phylactery is supposed to grant wishes?” Mr. Naboo said, there was a murmur of agreement. “That’s what this does.” Mr. Noir’s eyes went so large and wide at this declaration that not even a pinwheel could have attempted to compete with their crackling brightness. 

“You’ve… tested this?” asked Dennis.

“Without knowing. I was putting it into the kiln and wished I had a cup of tea, then Bollo came in with one.”

Howard directed a targeted look toward Mr. Noir. And shook his head in disgust. Apparently, Mr. Naboo had never heard of _coincidence_.

He expected to hear at least Mr. Saboo voice the same thoughts that Howard was having, but he didn’t. In fact, the room below was completely silent. It was with complete and total gravity that Dennis said, “That you had yet to ask for? My God.” 

Howard was highly irritated by all the fools downstairs. Deluded, that’s what they were. All engaged in some kind of communal fantasy. Howard had always thought Mr. Naboo was a charlatan. Now he had to consider that _he believed his own schemes_ , which was worse, somehow, than simply fooling other people for money.

Pathetic, was what it was. 

He drew himself up and listened with distain to the rest of the conversation. 

“The high Xoobrian, the property which you have observed… I am afraid that we have no choice but to treat this as though it is the phylactery. Kirk could not have picked a worse time to abandon us.”

“What of the instrument, Sire? Surely, it is still secure,” said Mr. Saboo.

“Um, yes. Well, funny thing, actually. I went to check up on it and it’s… missing. I’m afraid.”

“Jesus Christ, Dennis, you nob-head,” said Tony Harrison, affording Dennis none of the respect that Mr. Saboo seemed to treat him with, “You ain’t telling us you hid _that_ on Earth too?”

“Yes, well, how was I supposed to know that of all the billions of inhabitable planets to choose from, we’d both choose Earth to hide our relics?”

“And I suppose it didn’t occur to you to choose an uninhabitable planet?” asked Mr. Naboo sardonically. “Avoid all this entirely?”

“Yeah, well, hindsight is 20/20, isn’t it? Look, enough of this. While we may not know for certain that this is the phylactery, I feel we must treat it as though it is. The consequences would be dire indeed should this fall into the wrong hands.” 

“Blood on the streets,” lisped Mr. Naboo.

“A one-way ticket to the crunch.” 

“ _Nanageddon_.”

“Not now, you nitwit—” 

“Silence! I am sure we all apprehend the peril we are in, even Tony Harrison. Until we have returned Kirk to the fold, I am afraid that it is too dangerous to move. Would you be able to keep it secure, Naboo?”

“Sure.”

“Then I must ask you to do so.”

“Didn’t actually have to say that. I inferred it. From context, yeah?”

“Yes... well. Consider that your duty. Saboo, I have a mission for you as well. I need you to locate the instrument and any possible… agent who might be working on behalf of our old enemy.”

“I shall do as you command.”

“Yes, but you shall not go alone—”

“Awww, yeah! Is this a team up?”

“Please, Sire, not a team up.”

“It is indeed a team up! Tony Harrison and Saboo. The dynamic duo, my crackest of crack teams. In the meantime, I shall endeavor to persuade Kirk to return to us. Even though he is involved in only the darkest depravities of the soul, he is the only one of our order who possesses the knowledge and… er… eyesight to determine if this is truly the phylactery or merely an imitation.”

There were hums of agreement.

“Right. Remember, we are a competent team of competent magic men. Let’s not bung this up, yes?”

“Wonderful pep-talk, Sire.”

“Thank you, Saboo.”

The discussion continued a little longer and eventually devolved into bickering. Howard barely attended any of it, but he heard enough to form the impression that the supposed _magic men_ were far from competent.

He waited at Mr. Noir’s leisure, until, at last, he too seemed to grow bored of the exchange below. He tipped his chin toward the door and Howard nodded. Mr. Noir shut the door behind them and they were in the hall once more.

******

He and Mr. Noir did not discuss what they’d overheard; indeed the late hour, combined with the presence of so many other people in the house made Howard nervous that they would, to borrow Mr. Noir’s phrase, _be rumbled_ were they to have any sort of conversation beyond a quick goodnight. Howard had suggested that they would speak of it in the morning, though he had no real intention of doing so. He only wanted to forget what he’d overheard, and, further, put the whole silly evening behind him. 

Or, rather, the latter portion of it. He had not minded the earlier portion of the evening at all. 

Howard undressed and readied himself for bed then blew out his lamp and tucked his covers over himself. He closed his eyes. The dust of his thoughts settled.

The idiots downstairs were slowly dismissed. Magic was shoved aside. His shame over his own silliness over the mysterious carpetbag lingered, but this too eventually faded.

He was on the edge of sleep.

 _It was nice_. 

He heard the echo of those words again, felt a strange warmth nestle somewhere near his heart. _It was nice_ , such a simple phrase. Such a simple sentiment, and yet, one that Howard felt strike him as intensely as the finest poetry. It cut him direct, the same as everything Mr. Noir seemed to say, or do.

Howard was not blind to the fact that Mr. Noir had been completely taken in by the men belowstairs. He had believed every word, had adopted their delusions as his own. He was not a sensible man. No rational person could possibly have failed to see what was so apparent. The men in Mr. Naboo’s study tonight were not, could not, be telling the truth. 

Howard understood wanting to believe something, and he understood twisting facts to suit wishes, but he also understood that the evidence of almost thirty years of existence could not be ignored.

There was no magic.

End of story.

What, then, did this foolishness mean for Mr. Noir's good opinion? It should have, perhaps, cheapened it, made it worth less. After all, Mr. Noir had abysmal taste in music, could not tell the difference between an aria and a pub song, but _somehow_ it didn't. Somehow, Howard felt no one's praise could be worth more. 

Near thirty years of existence had informed Howard of other things too. He knew he had a habit of forming one-sided attachments, and he knew himself well enough to realize that he was in the process of forming the mother of all one-sided attachments. Perhaps, it had already formed. 

Howard’s playing was _nice_. Mr. Noir, unsensible, foolish Mr. Noir, thought Howard’s playing was _nice_.

He saw Mr. Noir’s teasing smile, remembered his hair as he had seen it that morning in the bathroom, unbound, a wild black corona that looked soft as silken thread, seemed welcoming to Howard’s fingers as a cool flowing stream on a hot day.

Could a different turn of phrase or moment have led to Howard tugging the black ribbon that had bound it tonight loose? 

Howard imagined himself back on the sofa, Vince slouched next to him. He painted desire in Vince’s eyes, parted his lips, made him sit up, slide closer. He laid his hand on Howard’s stomach, just where he’d touched him that once before, only this time, the flip in Howard’s belly was expected, welcome. Vince turned his head and Howard pulled the end of the ribbon. It slipped loose. 

Vince’s hair fell across his shoulders. Howard brushed it back, trailed his fingers over the skin of Vince’s throat, before he threaded his hands into it. 

_That’s nice, Howard_ , Vince whispered, low and breathy, and he leaned close, his eyes coruscating with that easy, untrammeled joy of his, before they closed. Closer, closer, warm breath, then soft lips, a heartbeat next to his, the heat of skin…

Howard spent the rest of the night twisting the facts into pretzels.


	9. An Unwise Action

Mr. Naboo was sat at the dining room table when Howard came downstairs the next morning. He occupied the centermost seat on the far side of the table so that, as soon as Howard entered, he saw him. Mr. Naboo was not in the habit of breakfasting with his tenants. In fact, Howard was unsure if the man breakfasted at all. He had never, in Howard’s presence, eaten a single thing.

Therefore, Howard startled upon seeing him. 

Mr. Naboo’s expression never changed from what Howard thought of as its neutral position, but Howard was struck by three impressions in looking at him. The first was that Mr. Naboo had been waiting _for him_ , the second was that he was not pleased, the third was that, even though magic was bollocks and he was roughly the size of a twelve-year-old child, Mr. Naboo was not the sort of person one wanted to cross.

“Good morning, sir,” Howard said, resorting to manners in his time of crisis. “I hope you had a pleasant... evening.”

Mr. Naboo watched him with reptilian boredom. “I know what you’re doing.”

Howard’s eyebrows rose into his hairline at this pronouncement, since Howard was not quite sure what he was doing himself other than attempting to ignore his headache, have some breakfast, and get himself to Brook Street before Mr. Noir woke.

Then, it occurred to him that Mr. Naboo had somehow divined the _thoughts_ he’d been having of Mr. Noir and meant to imply that Howard was plotting some sort of seduction. Rapidly upon the heels of that consideration was the thought that perhaps Mr. Naboo was alluding to the conversation, or rather, at this point, conversations that Howard had intentionally overheard and suspected him of perhaps trying to do some sort of mischief with regards to his supposed sorcery.

None of it was true, of course, but Howard was quickly flustered. “Oh, I... um... what... what’s that then?”

Mr. Naboo continued to look unamused. “You’re trying to slide.”

“Slide?” Howard asked, baffled by the expression, which, to him, only conjured up an image of an icy pond that the children of his neighborhood used to skate across on cold winter days, and since he knew of no place where such activity could be performed, nor ever held much inclination for the pastime when he _had_ , he had no idea how any such thing could be considered to be his intent.

“On the rent.”

Howard at last apprehended him. “The rent. Of course. No, sir, I assure you, I am not trying to do that.”

“You ain’t going to have it though, are you?”

“Of course I will,” Howard said, sounding false even to his own ears. He grimaced.

“You can fool Vince, but you can’t fool me,” Mr. Naboo said.

“Fool…?” Howard said, puzzled, and thoroughly unaware that he’d been trying to _fool_ anyone. “I’m not sure what you…”

Mr. Naboo blinked, his face passive and still as stone. His eyes had a strange focus.

It was like Howard had accidently stepped onto Anubis’ scales, and Mr. Naboo was watching the scales tip back and forth, the impression almost enough to cause Howard to believe that there was something supernatural in it. He did not know what he was expecting, but he was somewhat surprised when Mr. Naboo suddenly sat back. His expression was enigmatic. If Howard had been judged, he had no way of knowing if the judgment had been in his favor or not.

“If you don’t have the rent in full at the end of this month, back rent included, you’re out,” Mr. Naboo said, standing. “Watch yourself, yeah?”

“Of course. Yes. I… the rent, I’ll have it. I assure you.”

Mr. Naboo left Howard alone with the furry porridge that was to be his breakfast.

The day was off to a capital start.

******

Howard spent the whole long trip to Brook Street trying to think of a way that he could somehow find an extra fifteen euros in three days. He immediately dismissed anything to do with the Bainbridges. In fact, nothing could have persuaded him to meet with Sir Dixon regarding any sort of boon, financial or otherwise, except, perhaps, pain of death, and even in that case, he’d probably have taken death. It was infinitely cheaper, after all, to be dead than it was to be alive. 

He tried to think of what he could pawn. He could try to sell his hair, which had become rather shaggy, though he had no notion of what he could get for it, or if anyone would want to buy it in any case. It had been remarked to him that his hair was _fine_ , which he had taken as a compliment on its quality, but he did not have so very much of it that it would, on its own, make anyone a full hairpiece. Plus, selling hair sounded very like something out of _Little Dorrit_ , or _Oliver Twist_ , something a scrappy orphan or a resilient heroine would do, not like something a full-grown man should consider. 

As far as material possessions, he could try to sell his satchel, which was, essentially, scraps of leather held together out of habit more than stitching at this point, but hecould not imagine it fetching much money. He no longer had a spare pair of shoes, nor an extra coat, nor anything with which he could really do without.

There was, in short, no way for him to amass such a fantastic sum in such a short time.

He had accepted that he would need to leave the rooming house eventually, had even come to terms with it as a wise course of action, but he had not thought he would need to leave so soon. He did not, when it came down to it, want to leave the house. 

He didn’t want to leave Vince.

He was thoroughly miserable even before he had to sit on the upper deck of the omnibus and endure the company of a man eating a raw onion like an apple, which he chewed with his mouth open, so that his spittle and onion juice sprayed Howard in the face and who got _extremely angry_ when Howard asked him to chew _like a human being_. So angry, that Howard had found himself ejected over the siderail with more than a mile of his journey left to go. 

Then, he had to convince Mrs. Gideon of who he was _again_ , and had to do the same for Grahame, one of the more aggressive footmen, who threw Howard out of the house _twice_ , before Howard at last managed to sneak past him by hiding in a plant that it turned out _he was allergic to_ if the rash on his neck and hands was any indication.

The whole thing left him very nearly in tears.

Young Dixon, naturally, picked up on this straight away. “What’s the matter, Moon? Rip your petticoat on the way here?”

“No,” Howard said, dabbing at his red eyes and scratching his neck.

“Ragging, then?”

“Just... be quiet. Sit down, please.”

“Are you trying to tell me what to do?”

“I’m trying to do what I am being paid to do, which is educate you. Please sit—”

This plea was immediately met with Dixon bursting into a sprint and circling the perimeter of the room, “Want me to sit? How about you make me!?”

“Dixon, please—”

“Ha- _ha!”_ Dixon shouted as he came around the back side of the chalkboard. He dashed past Howard, as Howard continued to plead with him, made another loop, then scooped his ink pot off his desk, spun, and threw the contents at Howard’s face.

It was a wild throw, and, in reality, had less chance of hitting Howard than it did of missing him, but, naturally, it struck home.

Howard wiped his face with his hand, doing nothing better than smearing the ink and irritating his rash. He stared down at the little boy who was now half-keeled over with laughter.

“Ha! What do you say to that?” Dixon crowed, “Finally looks like you’ve got a proper moustache and not that rotting bit of moleskin you’ve been keeping under your nose like some sort of molly wanker!”

“It’s not polite to use that sort of language,” Howard said.

“What are you going to do about it? You want to square up, Moon?” Dixon drew his fists up in front of him.

“You’re ten years old!”

“So? We can go, right now,” Dixon said, pointing at the ground. “I don’t care. I’ll take you down to the pain circus, feed you some punishment monkey-nuts, and leave you crying _like a baby_.”

Howard pinched the bridge of his nose, “How about we work on your fractions?”

“How about you suck a toad?” Dixon said with a hearty cackle that was echoed from the doorway. Sir Dixon had evidently walked past just in time to catch his son’s comment.

“How about you...” Howard checked himself. He held his breath and counted off the reasons why he certainly should not, under any circumstances, walk out of the room, punch a child in the face, or otherwise lose his temper. “How about we start with geography today? We can learn all about New Guinea. Your father is just back from New Guinea, isn’t he?”

“You’re pathetic, Moon,” little Dixon said, with a sneer, but he at last went to his desk and sat. “Makes me sick to look at you.”

Howard made himself sick too.

******

“Hey, Howard how's it—why’ve you got shit all over your face?” Mr. Noir was standing in the hall, evidently ready to go out for the evening. He was wrapped in his wine-colored chesterfield, his gloved hands wrapped around a walking stick.

Howard gave him a doleful look, “It’s ink,” he said.

Mr. Noir snorted, “Looks like you’ve got a little something on your neck too.”

“Rash,” Howard said.

“And dirt on your back.”

“Fell off the omnibus.”

“Christ, you’ve had a day, then, eh?” Mr. Noir said, laughing.

Howard slouched in his too-large and, yes, filthy coat, the chill rain of a late October night soaking him nearly to the bone. He was cold, and tired, and could not do _this_ , not tonight. “Don’t.”

Mr. Noir’s smirk died. He shifted where he stood then set the walking stick down, “Come here.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m going to top it off and kick you in the shins.”

Howard shrugged and allowed Mr. Noir to escort him into the dining room. He instructed Howard to sit, then went out a door through which Howard himself had never ventured. The sign over it clearly indicated that tenants were not meant to go beyond, and Howard had nothing if not a healthy respect for the rules. Usually, anyway.

Mr. Noir, obviously, felt no such respect. He returned after a moment with a rough cloth and a little cup that contained some sort of solution. He placed the cup on the table and handed Howard the cloth.

“Wipe your face with that. It’ll help get the ink off, and this is for the rash,” he said, producing a small, amber bottle. “Naboo made that, clears up all sorts of skin stuff. It’ll do for your rash, I bet.”

Though Howard had been born the gentleman, he was aware that he did not look like one. Between the pair of them, it was Mr. Noir who looked the part, even if he was far too garishly colored to be proper. He looked very much like he could have produced fifteen euros out of his pocket change without a second thought. Had Howard asked him, he very probably would have done and given it to him without a single qualm. 

Howard, though, would never ask him for anything. He was despised and pitied enough, pathetic in everyone’s eyes. Realistically, he knew, Mr. Noir pitied him as well. How else to explain his treatment of Howard? But, Howard would not, under any circumstances, feed that pity, or cause it to grow, through asking a favor that he should never have had to ask.

_Foolish boy._

Yes, quite right. In so many things, he was nothing but an ignorant child. 

Howard stared at the teacup. He looked up at Mr. Noir. “You don’t have to... you can stop this, you know. At any time. I don’t need you to... mother me up, or...” he looked down toward the floor, no longer able to bear meeting Mr. Noir’s gaze, “just stop. I can—”

“I never said you couldn’t.”

“Then what are you doing?” Howard snapped.

Mr. Noir, for once, seemed at a loss for words. “It’s just water and a bit of cream of tartar...”

Howard sucked on his teeth. Mr. Noir’s large eyes were larger than usual, the shock of being nipped at by the family spaniel in them. Howard cursed himself, “Yes. I... alright. Thank you.” He dipped the end of the rag into the teacup and started wiping his face. Blue-black ink came away in streaks.

Howard entertained a belief that Mr. Noir would walk away without another word, but he did not. Anyone else would have, but Mr. Noir stayed. 

“Howard,” he began, his voice once more that soft, confidential tone that he only ever seemed to use on the very rarest of occasions, “You’re... my friend, alright? I don’t think of you like... I just want to help you. If I can. Someone helped me once, and without him, I’d be lord knows what. But I don’t think that you’re incapable, or something. It’s just… hard, isn’t it?”

Howard didn’t say anything.

Mr. Noir scuffed his shoe against the floor before he continued, “I’m working tonight. Naboo’s gone, I think, too. So, you’ll have the house to yourself. More or less.” Howard looked up at him and Mr. Noir gave him a weak smile, “I’ll see you later, yeah?”

Howard nodded, “Yes.”

Mr. Noir went to the doorway. His hand landed on the side and he tapped it with his thumb. “Play for a bit? I mean, don’t, if you don’t want to, but, like I said, you’re... alone. So, if you want, you know. Go mental.” He hesitated for a moment and then began to walk on.

“Vince,” Howard said, and Mr. Noir paused and turned toward him. “I... I mean it. Thank you.”

Vince smiled at Howard and the smile pierced Howard’s heart like an arrow.

******

Howard sat for a long time next to the teacup full of inky water. He stared down at the floor.

His thoughts were heavy things bundled into carts and set over the same path again and again until high ruts formed on either side of them.

He didn’t want to leave the rooming house. He needed fifteen euros. He had no way of getting fifteen euros. He would be thrown out. He would never see Vince again. He couldn’t stand the thought of not seeing Vince again. If he left the rooming house, they would have no more reason to meet. He didn’t want to leave the rooming house.

He needed fifteen euros.

He was desperate, as desperate as he’d ever been. It wasn’t an excuse. He would not have tried to use it as one, for he knew, full well, that what he was doing was wrong, even as he stood and stalked down the hall on silent feet, but Mr. Naboo was no friend of his, he’d made that clear enough, and Howard had no intention of permanently relieving him of his property.

It would only be a sort of loan. One he wouldn’t be wholly aware of, but nevertheless, _only_ a loan. Mr. Naboo had so very many things in his study, he was unlikely to miss just one provided Howard chose well.

He would find himself solvent again eventually. He’d purchase the item back. No one would be any the wiser.

That was what he told himself as he pushed open the door to Mr. Naboo’s study.

The room was cold and dark. There was a small window next to the back door and, through this, the light of the moon trickled. Nervous of alerting someone to his presence in the room, Howard hesitated to turn on the gaslight, but he absolutely needed light to see by, not only for the selection of his quarry, but also to avoid tripping over anything in the rather crowded chamber. Holding his breath, he turned the switch.

The light flared up and Mr. Naboo’s study was revealed in all its falsely mystical glory. It was wide as the house itself, but very short, so that the door that led to the alley took up nearly a third of that wall. A small window was next to the door, the curtain over it pushed aside. The walls were dark blue, though there was so little of them to be glimpsed, that it didn’t much matter what color they were. The primary color of the room was _book_.

An entire legion of shelves surrounded the room, and these were lined with yards of books, pamphlets, and loose papers in a riotous proliferation that Howard suspected was in no way systematic. 

Apart from the shelves, there was a desk to Howard’s left (which was covered in still more books and papers), toward the center of the room, was small table with a crystal ball atop it and several chairs around it, on the back wall, a tall apothecary’s cabinet, packed with sparkling bottles, and a few other smaller pieces of furniture which seemed to serve no purpose other than to collect atmospheric flotsam.

Of these items there were far too many to list, indeed, far too many to be noticed even at a third or fourth pass around the room, but there were highlights that drew Howard’s eye. A cloche with a withered monkey’s paw, a jar of what seemed to be preserved eyeballs, a case of mounted beetles, bird skulls arranged in order of size, a pot of plain stones with holes worn into them, a cheval mirror with an inlaid frame of moons and stars, pieces of smoothed quartz emblazoned with gold-etched runes, human teeth in a jar, a brass elephant studded with sparkling gems, a carven sphynx fashioned out of onyx, a smoke-stained censer, a small, crudely-made doll, herbs in bundles hung to dry from the ceiling, and unlit candles in such profusion that they numbered nearly as many as the books.

Howard’s first thought was to take a candlestick and have done, seeing as there were so many, but upon closer inspection, none of them were very fine, and all were so thoroughly encrusted in wax that in order to fetch a decent price, he’d have had to clean it.

Abandoning that course of action, he made his way around the perimeter of the room, carefully shifting the loose papers to see what was underneath. He was rewarded with more specimens of a naturalistic bend; bat bones, egg shells, dried mushrooms and the like, but still nothing to sell. He opened the drawers of the apothecary’s cabinet. Cyanide, opium, laudanum, cocaine, arsenic... just what could be got at any chemist’s. 

He was only just starting to rethink what had seemed like such an easy and convenient solution to his problem when a glint caught his eye. In between two stacks of leaning, dusty books and sandwiched among loose sheets of parchment, he noticed a whisper of gold. He pushed the stack up and revealed a small box. 

Decorative, ornate, and covered in gilt, it looked worth at least fifteen euros. Buried as it was, Howard thought it had very likely been forgotten. He gingerly removed the box from the shelf, doing his best to disturb nothing else. He tucked it under his arm, and as he did so, he heard something scrape inside of it.

He shook the box, once, just to be sure, then opened it. Inside was a necklace.

Howard took it out and held it up to the light. It wasn’t large, or gaudy, or at all special looking, but rather a simple gold chain with a smallish emerald pendant. It was too modest in appearance for Howard to think that the jewel or the chain were false. Very probably, he thought, some girl had brought it in lieu of cash payment and Mr. Naboo had accepted it and then forgot that he was meant to sell it. It certainly looked like the sort of thing some slightly impoverished gentlewoman might part with for whatever _mystical information_ she was seeking.

It was completely perfect for his purpose. He smiled and tucked it into his pocket, then replaced the box just where he’d found it.

Successful for a change, he dimmed the gaslight, shut the door to Mr. Naboo’s study and congratulated himself on completing the first step in the perfect _surreptitious loan._


	10. To Limehouse

Far from a restless night, Howard fell asleep quickly and without any trouble to his conscience regarding his intention. He woke early and set off through a cold drizzle for Limehouse, intending to find a pawnbroker who would serve his purpose. He had the necklace safely wrapped in a kerchief in his pocket, and he kept his hand upon it while he walked through Shoreditch and Whitechapel, past the sad and desperate slums, not wishing to tempt fate.

Limehouse had an air almost of the seaside, with numerous docks and shipyards, and all the sailors that accompanied them. There seemed to be, anyway, a large number of Cornishmen who swaggered through the streets, very much like the imagined _Pirates of Penzance_ , with tricorn hats, sabers and the like, who glared at Howard from behind their eyepatches, and revealed shiny gold teeth when they sneered at him.

Howard spent some time choosing the correct pawnbroker for his purpose. He wanted a shop that looked too poor to be the sort of place that would be likely to sell the necklace if Howard was late for repayment, and yet one that looked fine enough to afford to buy it. He ended up choosing a place that was jammed in between a milliner’s shop and a glazer’s in a street of slightly depressed character that was buffeted to the rear by a large warehouse.

The shop itself was squat, compressed, as it was, by several floors of leaning brick above it, with a dingy window at the front, the panes of which looked like they had last been clean sometime during the regency. Through this dismal portal Howard peered, and was just barely able to see a pair of garnet rings and a pocket watch which would not have looked out of place in the window of any pawnbroker’s shop.

In addition to these, though, were a multitude of bizarre shell-encrusted boxes, shoes, hats, gloves, and other formerly useful items that had been ruined in this way. 

The strangeness of the display led him to believe that this must be precisely the sort of shop he was looking for.

Howard stepped into the shop and, as his eyes adjusted to the dim, he found himself both puzzled and saddened by what he saw.

There were clothes that had seen too many seasons of wear, forks with bent, misshapen tines, a set of abused carpenter’s tools, and many more small things that had clearly been sold as a last resort. All of these items were set out upon abused-looking articles of furniture that seemed to be in various stages of joining the choir eternal, each heavily marked by the ravages of time. 

The display would merely have been sad and not puzzling if it were not for the fact that nearly everything was embellished with tiny shells. A shell-encrusted chair sat next to a small beshelled table. On top of the table was a shell-covered pitcher and washbasin. Hung above the display was a shelled frame with the picture underneath done over in shells so that the image was barely recognizable as a portrait of the Queen herself.

Thinking, perhaps, that he’d made a mistake, Howard turned to go, but then he caught sight of a jewelry case behind the shop’s counter. The jewelry within was all very much of a character with the necklace he had and Howard relaxed.

He went to the counter and rang the little silver bell atop it, then turned back toward the door and caught the eye of a dejected-looking rocking horse that seemed to frown at him from beneath its beard of shells. For the first time, Howard felt a slight hesitation, or apprehension about his plan. It was perhaps the character of the shop itself. He had a feeling that abandoning the necklace someplace like this was akin to abandoning a newborn at an orphanage, that he was going give it up to a life of tristesse and destitution. 

He shook off the notion, steeled himself with the knowledge that he had no real choice, and consoled himself that it hadn’t exactly been living the high life, locked up in the box in Mr. Naboo’s study. At least here, it would see a sort of daylight, fogged and dingy though it was, and why was he personifying a necklace anyway? Necklaces didn’t have feelings. 

Even so. He fished the necklace out of his kerchief and fought the temptation to apologize to it. He wished that the fellow who ran the shop would hurry up and appear so that he could get this transaction over with.

If the man had materialized with a bang of flash powder and out of a cloud of smoke, Howard would not have been more surprised at his sudden appearance. For his part, the rotund, pug-faced man seemed no less surprised than Howard at his being there. He recovered quickly, however, and had an air of ease in place within less than a second. He placed a hand upon the counter and then took his corn cob pipe from his mouth, “Ah, hello there, stranger. Ramsay’s me name, pawnin’s me game. How may I help ye?”

Somewhat startled, Howard floundered and took a step back. 

Ramsay only looked at him with a perfectly ordinary detachment, as though he had nothing better to do than to wait upon Howard to regather his wits.

“Ah. Hello,” Howard hazarded.

“Hello,” Ramsay said again, this time more slowly and delicately, as though coming around to the idea that Howard might be, perhaps, a trifle thin-witted.

“I have something to... er... sell.”

“Ah, of course ye do!” Ramsay said heartily, “Well, ye’ve come to the right place. I deal in all the finest little bits and bobs as ye see here, sir. An’ I do say, if ye’d rather, I give handsome store credit if something ye see has taken yer fancy. Perhaps this rather nice hairbrush?” He pulled out what had formerly been a hairbrush, and possibly still could have been had not the boar bristles been replaced by shells.

“Ah...” Howard said, wondering how to parry this sally without giving offense, “I think... um, just euros would be fine.”

“I see,” said Ramsay, his chin dipping down toward his chest dejectedly. He tucked the hairbrush away. “Well, what have ye?”

Howard presented the necklace and Ramsay took out some little glass that he fitted into his eye while he peered at it. He set it down on the counter between them and aimed a canny look at Howard. “Hmm,” he mused, “I could see this fetching a price of... five euro?”

“Five euros?” Howard repeated, greatly shocked, “Are you mad? It’s worth at least forty!”

Ramsay laughed, “Now who’s daft? Forty euro? It barely be worth a trout’s tongue.”

Howard looked down at the necklace and took the chain between his thumb and forefinger. He couldn’t be positive, but it certainly seemed to be pure gold. “I won’t part with it for less than fifteen.”

“Sorry to disappoint, sir, but five is me only offer.”

“I want fifteen euros and no less,” Howard said.

A strange look passed over Ramsay’s face. He turned to his till, opened it, and counted out three five-euro notes and slid them toward Howard.

“There ye go,” he said.

“Alright, then,” Howard said, feeling pleased that his negotiating tactics had proved successful. He relinquished his hold on the necklace, picked up the euros and turned to go.

“Ye forgot yer necklace.”

“I just sold it to you.”

“I didn’t buy it, sir,” said Ramsay.

“You just gave me fifteen euros.”

“Aye.”

“...But you didn’t buy the necklace.”

“Nay.”

“Alright,” Howard said, puzzling this through with little success. “So, I should take the necklace with me and go?”

“Unless ye want to take me offer of five euro for it.”

Howard hesitated for a long time, thinking, somehow, at any moment, someone would stop him from walking out with both the money and the necklace, sure that this someone would be an official of the law who had set up the events just to ensnare dishonest men. Howard was categorically unsure if he was just such a dishonest man, or if he should object to the sudden windfall and tell Ramsay that he had made a mistake. 

“I shan’t be selling it,” Howard said at last.

“Well, get ye gone then!”

Howard looked about him for the men who might be lying in wait to take him off to Newgate, but, if they were there, they were very well hidden. Almost reluctantly, he picked the necklace up off the counter and held it in his hand. In his other hand he held the euros. He stood, frozen, unable to grasp how events had reached such a thoroughly satisfactory conclusion. 

Ramsay watched him, gradually appearing to become bewildered by Howard’s refusal to quit his shop. “I’m going on break,” he said at last, and kept a wary eye upon Howard as he went through a back door. Howard was, to all evidence, alone.

There was nothing left to do, so Howard exited and found himself once more in the brackish air of Limehouse.

He still half expected someone to fall upon him and seize him, which resulted in his alternately peering around him in the most suspicious manner possible and then forcing himself into a state of tightly regulated calm that was thoroughly unnatural. 

He kept his hands jammed in his pockets, fearing that either the necklace or his euros might at any second disappear. It seemed as though one of them should do, as though he had somehow cut a neat slice through time itself and wandered from one moment where he’d sold the necklace to another moment when he had not without bothering to reconcile both events appropriately.

It wasn’t until he reached the more familiar streets of Shoreditch that he began to consider that it didn’t really matter _what_ had happened; he’d apparently got away with it and had hurt no one.

He started, somewhat, to relax.

He did not have to work, so he headed back toward the rooming house but he shortly found himself accosted by a short, squint-eyed woman who absolutely insisted upon pressing a meat pie upon him _free of charge_. Then a haberdasher sprinted out of his shop to tell Howard that he absolutely needed a new hat and that he had just the one for him and gifted Howard a new bowler for no better reason, evidently, than that he’d seen Howard passing by. 

It wasn’t until he turned a corner and found a cobbler throwing away a perfectly good pair of shoes, which were sized as though meant for Howard, that he began to feel, once more, uncommonly suspicious. 

It wasn’t that Howard felt he didn’t deserve these things or that he wasn’t happy to receive them, it was just _strange_. He almost wished that he had Mr. Noir with him to sound him out. Indeed, it would have been very nice to have him to talk to.

Then… he appeared. 

He was just _there_ as though he’d been walking down the street unobserved the whole while, hidden, perhaps, by the people around him, obscured, somehow, from Howard’s view, though Howard scarcely knew how he might have passed so unnoticed, dressed as he was in a bright blue coat and gleaming silver trousers. He drew up short upon apprehending Howard and grinned up at him happily, “Did you get a new hat?”

“What are you doing here?” Howard asked.

Mr. Noir looked about him, as though trying to ascertain if there was a reason why he should not have found himself in the particular place he was in, “Came looking for you, didn’t I?”

“What for?”

Mr. Noir considered this and then shrugged, “Dunno. Not much on at home, I suppose. Thought I could persuade you to walk toward Fleet Street again and maybe we’d have some more of those satsumas. Something like that, anyway.”

“So, just to...”

“Just to come see you, I guess,” Mr. Noir said, looking away from him. He adjusted the pretty grey gloves he wore on his hands, “Why? Shouldn’t I have?”

Howard was too wrapped up in his unease to feel any pleasure over the fact that Mr. Noir had evidently missed him enough to wander the streets of London in search of him. Instead, he peered around him, looking for… something, he knew not what, but something, surely, very menacing indeed. “I think something is wrong,” he said, fingering the chain of the necklace again.

“Has something happened?”

Howard shook his head, so puzzled that he was quite at a loss to form an answer. He took stock. He touched the new hat upon his head, shifted round the new pair of shoes that he was holding, flipped the edges of the fifteen euros in his pocket, and then grasped the necklace and wished that he knew how to account for all of it. 

Then, like a bolt of lightning striking a tree, he did. 

“Oh my God,” Howard gasped. He released the necklace immediately and grabbed the front of Mr. Noir’s coat. Greatly surprised, Mr. Noir yelped. Howard shook him a little to calm him down, “Oh my God,” he repeated. His thoughts tumbled over themselves like excited puppies.

“Are you alright? You look—”

“Shut up. Shut up and let me think,” Howard said, giving him another small shake.

“Let go of me then,” Mr. Noir said quietly, with a pointed glance at several people who were, most definitely noticing their exchange.

Howard released him. He touched the necklace in his pocket once more. He looked around them, “We have to get— is there somewhere private hereabouts?” 

Mr. Noir was about to answer him when Howard apprehended a small public house. He grabbed Mr. Noir by the arm and drew him along toward it. Mr. Noir tolerated the sudden manhandling of his person with bemused annoyance, regularly entreating Howard to tell him what was going on as he was shoved into the pub. 

Howard took him to the booth furthest from the door and said nothing until the publican came over and took an order from them. Bewildered, and, as yet, unanswered, Mr. Noir asked for a pint of cider vinegar. Howard, scarcely less unnerved than his companion, asked for a plate of cold turkey feet.

The publican looked at them both and sighed with an air of one who simply had seen too much before he turned around, shaking his head and muttering on the way to his kitchen.

As soon as he was gone, Mr. Noir leaned over the table, “What’s going on?”

Howard removed the necklace from his pocket and laid it on the table between them.

Mr. Noir looked down at it in puzzlement, “What’s that?”

Howard felt his cheeks heat, “I... it’s... I’m a bit ashamed to say, but I... I took that from Mr. Naboo’s study last night.”

“What did you do that for?” Mr. Noir was apparently able to divine an answer merely from the look upon Howard’s face, “If you needed money—”

“I know. I know. But... Well, I didn’t sell it. Thank Christ I didn’t. My God, if I _had_...”

Mr. Noir’s head tilted, his eyes flicked down to the necklace between them and he said, “This isn’t it?”

Howard knew precisely to which _it_ Mr. Noir was referring. He nodded confirmation.

“But what about the... wasn’t there supposed to be writing or something? I thought that it would be... I dunno, larger or... you know. Grander, like.”

“I agree. I didn’t place it from what… from what we heard of its description, but… how many wish-granting necklaces can there possibly be?”

“Are you su— Hang on, have you used it?”

Howard folded his hands in front of him on the table. His left thumb stroked the back of his right. He looked warily at the necklace, “I may have done.”

“It works?” Mr. Noir asked animatedly.

“It... does, yes.”

Howard peeked up at Mr. Noir, whose eyes were flashing with excitement. He reached for the necklace.

Howard slapped his hand away, “Well, don’t _touch_ it!”

“You’ve been touching it!” Mr. Noir shook his hand and rubbed it, “You got to _use_ it.” He looked greedily at the necklace again, “Why can’t I?” 

“I didn’t know I was using it! It’s supposed to be dangerous, remember?” Here, Mr. Noir folded his arms across his chest like a pouting child. Howard gave him a very stern look, “No, I’m afraid, Mr. Noir, that I’ve got to put this back as soon as possible. Is Mr. Naboo at home?”

“He’s...” Mr. Noir’s eyes flicked sideways, then down at the table, “Yeah, he’s home. Got seances all day, or whatever. I dunno. You’re not sneaking in there to put it back, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“Damn,” Howard said, feeling that it was of the utmost importance to get the necklace as far from Mr. Noir as possible. The temptation of using it was obviously working on the other man, and Howard, if he were completely honest, was finding it very tempting himself. He could do with a new coat or two. “Do you remember when those... men are supposed to come back?”

Mr. Noir understood Howard’s meaning without clarification, “Not really. They said something weird, all lunar calendar whatnot or something.”

Howard did remember something about moons and half-moons, and the quarter light or something like that had not made much sense. He wiped his hand over his face, “Christ. It can’t be missing when they return. What if Mr. Naboo _checks on it?_ I have to get it back in there. Today. Immediately.”

“Wish it back,” Mr. Noir said, matter of fact, rather as though this solution should already have occurred to Howard. Howard gave him a doubtful look. “Why not?” Mr. Noir asked, “It grants wishes, don’t it?”

“Yes, but—"

“So, wish it back.”

Howard was about to explain the very practical way in which the necklace seemed to grant its wishes, which was, in short, to somehow influence people around it to do the things that the wisher was wishing for when Mr. Noir snatched the necklace off the table, closed his eyes, and then the necklace vanished.

“What did you do!?” Howard shouted, startling the publican to the point that he dropped the tray of turkey feet he’d been carrying toward them. He swore and then started clearing the dish away.

“I solved your problem is what I did,” Mr. Noir said, leaning toward Howard, and speaking quietly, “Wished it back where you got it from, didn’t I?”

“Oh, so you’re not at all concerned that it’s not ended up where it was supposed to be?”

“Not really, no. Why should I be?”

“Well, what if it has a mind of its own? Like a leprechaun or something. Like, you have to be really careful how you phrase things or you end up with your intestines sewn into fairy purses and your eye sockets spewing coins.”

Mr. Noir laughed, “As if that’s going to happen.”

“You don’t know,” Howard insisted. “It could. There could be repercussions beyond our control for this... we could... we could find ourselves embroiled in the worst sort of... _dark sorcery_ or...” Howard was becoming, by this point, highly distressed. He felt himself a bit unequal to the task of finding his breath.

“Steady on,” Mr. Noir said, laying a hand on Howard’s arm.

“Don’t tou—”

“Right, sorry. Don’t touch you,” Mr. Noir said, withdrawing. “Look, it’s alright.”

“Alright?” Howard asked with a laugh, “I suppose that this is nothing unusual for you, then? All bang up to the elephant, is it?”

Mr. Noir widened his eyes, “Well, you’ve got to expect to get into little fixes like this, living with a shaman.”

Howard froze, apprehending all in a rush that, if the necklace was real, then the tea leaves, the crystal ball, the ghostly summonings, demonic exorcisms, and all the rest were probably all too real as well. “He’s a charlatan,” Howard squeaked.

“No, he ain’t. You think I’d go about living with someone who called himself a shaman if he weren’t proper magic?”

“Proper...” Howard echoed distantly.

“You’re gaping like a carp. Look like you could swallow up the whole of Shoreditch in that cavernous gob of yours.”

Howard closed his mouth. “Sweet heavens...”

“Want your smelling salts?”

“Piss off.” 

Mr. Noir grinned. 

“My God,” Howard said, then again, and perhaps a third and fourth time after that. “Then,” he said at length, “those men… they’re… they’re, all of them, magic as well?”

Mr. Noir shrugged, “Suppose so. I dunno. Does it matter?”

“They sounded mad.”

“Yeah,” Mr. Noir agreed with a chuckle, “but, so far as I can tell, that goes with the territory. Even Naboo goes a little bonkers every once in a while, you just ain’t seen it yet because he don’t… well, he’s been trying to keep quiet about everything lately.” He shifted where he sat, then smiled, “So, come on. Tell me what you got up to with your wishes.”

Howard told him, and about the mad shop he’d gone into, about the ruined hairbrush; every detail, relevant or not. Mr. Noir listened keenly. When Howard had finished, Mr. Noir said, “Well, don’t sound like you could end up with coin eyes from any of that.”

He insisted that they had employed the necklace in only a very limited fashion and _if_ any ill-effects from using it were going to manifest, surely they would have done already. Howard dearly wished to believe that this were true, so he began to allow himself to be convinced, and soon Mr. Noir had cheered him to the point that he felt rather good about the whole affair.

He did, after all, have his money, and new shoes, and a new hat, so it did appear, on the face of it, to have come out rather well. Plus, Mr. Noir kept saying _we_ and _us_ as though they’d been in it together, as though he’d participated as much as Howard in the folly of the theft. It pleased Howard more than it should have, this verbal implication that they were a pair. 

In the end, Howard allowed himself to be persuade so far as to celebrate his windfall for the remainder of the morning. It was late afternoon by the time they finally departed for home. At some point, the weather had cleared. The sun was slanting toward the horizon, picking out each reflective surface in orange flame, while they walked through the crowded streets. 

Mr. Noir was recounting a scrape he’d got into with a couple of chorus girls and some fellow who wore two hats _at once_ as part of his stage apparel as they turned into their street. The tale required so many flourishes of his hands, and excited dips in his posture, and changes of voice that Howard was finding it difficult to maintain an air of detachment. It was a charming performance and he would have loved to watch it, but Howard was determined not to. Instead, he kept his eyes fixed on lampposts, on charwomen scrubbing stairs, on anything that wasn’t Mr. Noir.

He was casting about for a new object to fix his attention on and selected a carriage that had stopped rather near their door. It wasn’t a cab, which was, in itself, unusual. Rarely were private carriages in their neighborhood, and this one, while obviously older, looked well-maintained and had probably been of the first quality when it had been bought. There was a slight bowing about the roof and the wheels were—

Howard stopped abruptly.

Mr. Noir kept walking and talking for a pace or two before he noticed Howard was no longer walking with him. He stopped and looked ahead of them at the carriage. He turned and looked back at Howard. “What’s wrong? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

A ghost? In a way, Howard felt he had. “It’s my parents’ carriage.”


	11. An Unpleasant Interview, An Unexpected Ending

A million thoughts flew into Howard’s head at seeing that old carriage. The first was to wonder how he had been discovered, then, hard upon the heels of that thought, he wondered _why_ he had been sought out. His parents had very plainly said that they wanted nothing to do with a son who refused to do his duty, and Howard had no intention of doing any part of what they considered his duty.

He had thought himself rather shot of them.

He did not know, until that very moment, how much he did not truly want to be.

“Oh, God,” he said. His hands danced all across his coat and shirtfront, plucking at himself in a vague attempt to put himself to rights, “I... how do I look?”

Mr. Noir grimaced a little, which Howard took to mean that he did not look _well_ , which should not have surprised him, given that they had spent the better part of the day in a pub trying to somehow affect the disappearance of a pint of cider vinegar and a distressingly large plate of turkey feet, but he was still dismayed enough to mutter a very acid, “Thanks so much,” as though Mr. Noir had just insulted him, unprovoked.

“Here,” said Mr. Noir, approaching him with a look of concentration directed in the region of Howard’s cravat. He pushed Howard’s hands down to stop his fussing, and then he took over the fussing, gently adjusting every fold of Howard’s apparel until, at last, he stepped back and appraised him. “Put on the shoes?” he suggested.

Howard nodded and did so at once, discarding his old shoes by throwing them down the alley, and then Mr. Noir readjusted his cravat again.

“Well?” Howard asked him.

“I don’t suppose you’d let me do something to your hair?” Mr. Noir asked and Howard confirmed that he would not, so Mr. Noir shrugged and said, “As good as. Do you want me to go in first?”

“No, I’ll…” he glanced at Mr. Noir. “If you should address me in front of them or whoever, Mr. Moon, please?”

Mr. Noir smirked and gave Howard an obsequious bow, “I’ll ‘ave all me fine manners out on full display, that I will, guv’nor, yessir an’ all.”

“You’re a twit.”

Mr. Noir snickered. He gave Howard a look so much as to say, _well, let’s have this over with_ and then started toward their door with the easy confidence that he always seemed to exude.

Howard was aware that he was being pulled along, not bodily, but by some other power of Mr. Noir’s, as though Howard were a barge following an icebreaker on a cold winter day. He was aware, anyway, that he very probably would not have taken a step without the example of Mr. Noir to remind him just how it was done.

Howard peered into the carriage as they walked past it and found the interior empty. The driver was not a man that Howard recognized, but was dressed in his uncle’s livery. Howard assumed that he must have been borrowed from that house owning to a greater familiarity with London than any man from Leeds might have possessed.

Mr. Noir, Howard saw, noted the man too, and the manner of his dress but he didn’t seem overawed by the presence of a liveried servant sat atop the coach. Mr. Noir, in fact, smiled and nodded at the man, who, in the way of all good servants, completely ignored him.

They entered the house together, Mr. Noir sweeping off his chesterfield and hanging it up and Howard doing the same, just as Mr. Naboo came hastily out of the parlor. 

“Good,” he said. He jerked his thumb toward the parlor, “Someone for you.” He then walked down the hall without another word and went into his study, slamming his door behind him.

Mr. Noir engaged Howard in a silent conversation, his face asking a question that Howard interpreted readily enough. _Who could possibly get Naboo ruffled?_

“My mother,” Howard said, quietly, in answer.

Howard took a deep breath, set his shoulders back and walked to the parlor with an entire kettle of fish flopping in the region of his belly.

Mr. Naboo must have been persuaded to light a fire. That was Howard’s first thought, for he saw it burning just past the sofa, just past the woman sat upon it with her arms out straight in front of her, a straight, black stick clasped in her hands.

His mother.

She looked little altered since the last time he’d seen her. Her hair was still clinging on to its color, though it had faded somewhat from the shade of Howard’s own into something slightly lighter. Her face was more lined, yes, but it mattered little. She had never been a delicate beauty, but had been, and was still, a handsome woman. The age she wore did not dampen her looks.

Her disdainful eye combed, seemingly, over every object in the room before she deigned to look in Howard’s direction. He was first into the room, but his mother’s attention landed upon him second. The first person she looked at was Mr. Noir, who stood just off Howard’s shoulder, slightly to the rear, her eyes crystalizing into a look of deep scorn.

Howard knew what she was seeing. The blue coat the same shade as his eyes, the silver brocade of his waistcoat done in twisting vines, the perfect white of his shirt, and the navy ascot he wore, and the shimmering trousers that were just slightly snug around his thighs.

He could guess, too, what she was thinking.

Only when she had taken her fill of visually dismissing Mr. Noir did she look at Howard, “Darling,” she said, the coolness of her voice belying the endearment.

“Mother,” Howard acknowledged.

She rose and held out a hand and Howard went to her and took it in his. She gave him the slightest peck on the cheek and Howard found himself almost overwhelmed by this outward display of affection. Perhaps, he considered, this visit could go well. He smiled at her and she did something like smile back at him before she said, “My goodness, how thin you’ve become!”

“Oh,” Howard said, looking down at himself and noting afresh the shabbiness of his apparel, which did not fit him as it once had, “A lot of, er, walking to be done in the city,” he said, neatly avoiding any mention of the proceeding weeks in which he had found himself rather short on food.

“ _This_ ,” asked she, with another disdainful look around the room, “is where you are living?”

Howard released her hand, “Um, yes. It is.” He bade her sit once more and she sat down. Howard sat down upon the bench of the piano across from her. 

Mr. Noir hovered uncertainly by the door and Howard looked at him and then said, “Mother, may I present to you my housemate, Mr. Noir? Mr. Noir, this is my mother, Mrs. Gerald Moon.”

His mother nodded coolly toward Mr. Noir, “Hello, sir.”

Mr. Noir smiled and dipped a slight bow, “Pleased to make your acquaintance, Ma’am. Should you like some refreshment? I might fetch you some port if you’d like?”

So out of character was this with his normal mode of speaking that Howard’s eyes snapped to Mr. Noir in some degree of surprise, before he was able to glance toward his mother again to see what effect this question had upon her.

She nodded gracefully, “Yes, port would be lovely.”

Mr. Noir bowed again and left his post near the door.

As soon as he was gone, his mother turned on him, “What sort of _person_ is that man? And to introduce me to him? Howard,” she said with a scornful shake of her head. “He does not seem _usual_. I suppose he must have a profession.”

“He does,” Howard confirmed hesitantly.

“And you live with this tradesman? Is he a tailor or suchlike? He seems very _low_.”

“I assure you, mother, that he is perfectly respectable,” Howard said with more credibility than his own assessment should have been able to muster.

“Howard, I do not like it. His surname, is it _French_?”

Howard made no reply. Mr. Noir was very probably worse things than merely French, but he saw no reason to disillusion his mother upon that point. She, however, seemed to read in his silence what he did not voice. She sat back, with her eyebrows raised. 

Howard very much wished to be well away from the topic of Mr. Noir. “How did you find me?” he asked.

“It was not hard, dear boy. Lord Terrance is well connected, I’m sure you remember. He has sent us word of your _doings_ on occasion, since you left. Had he mentioned the character of the place in which you are living, I assure you, I’d have made this journey much sooner. You cannot fail to be aware, I’m sure, that it is disappointing.”

“Ah,” Howard said.

“In addition to providing us with general knowledge of your whereabouts, he has informed us that you have taken on work as a tutor,” she said, twisting her stick in her hands as though it were something she was attempting to strangle.

“Yes.”

“That, I believe, was not your design in coming here.”

“No.”

“Well, then,” she said with a great air of finality that suggested she was too well-bred to actually state what Howard knew she meant. _You’re a failure, just as we said you would be_. “Perhaps you are ready to stop this nonsense and come home.”

It was at this moment that Mr. Noir returned with a silver tray with a decanter and three glasses atop it. He placed the tray down on the side table and poured for Howard’s mother a glass of the port, then offered one to Howard and finally took one for himself. 

Howard’s mother glared at him icily as soon as she perceived that he did not mean to quit the room, but Mr. Noir didn’t see or pretended not to see. Either way, he was apparently unaffected by her quiet display of hostility. He sat next to her on the other side of the sofa and crossed his knee over his leg. Into the thunderous silence of the room he said, “I like your dress very much, Mrs. Moon. The lace near your throat is very skillfully wrought.”

Howard’s mother nodded.

“Handmade, I’d wager,” Mr. Noir said. She made no response to him, but he continued on without, “You see so much machine made these days, which I suppose is why so many dresses have such a quantity of it, but it is not as delicate, nor as fine, as that which people make by hand. I always say so, don’t I, H—Mr. Moon?”

Howard answered a bit noncommittally, as he never recalled hearing Mr. Noir say anything on the topic of lace before in his life, but it did sound as it was something he _might say_ , so he gave his lukewarm response in the affirmative.

Silence fell. Mr. Noir cleared his throat, “I don’t suppose we might have the pleasure of you joining us for supper, Ma’am?”

“Certainly not,” Howard’s mother answered, seeming greatly affronted by even the suggestion.

Unhampered by her now overtly hostile attitude, Vince soldiered on, “Probably wise,” he said with one of his charming smiles, “The meals, I’m afraid, leave a little to be desired, don’t they, Mr. Moon?”

Howard studied his mother’s face. Her expression could not have been less pleased if a large and muddy dog had been leaping all over her best dress. “Yes,” he said, his eyes turning to the rug beneath their feet, which had somehow altered itself to look substantially more threadbare than it had even ten minutes earlier.

Mr. Noir took Howard’s charmless response and made the most of it, smiling again as he addressed Howard’s mother, “Anyway, I’m sure Naboo would be quite short in any case were we to have an unexpected addition to the party. He’s not, you see, Ma’am, one of those landlords who has the happy knack of always serving too much. He’s an economical fellow, Naboo. But, I do believe that he lives off nothing more than starlight and fairy dust himself, so he cannot really be blamed.” Mr. Noir chuckled into dead silence, looking at both Howard and his mother, before he took a sip of his port.

He gave Howard a look as though to say that he expected him to start picking up some conversational slack. 

Howard cleared his throat, “Is father well?”

His mother regarded him stonily, “Perfectly.”

“Good,” he answered with a frown. He met Mr. Noir's eye and, just as Howard had understood him, Mr. Noir seemed to interpret Howard's meaning readily enough. _Save yourself._

Mr. Noir drained his glass, “Well, I suppose I shall leave you two to… catch up. I find myself in terrible need of sorting my hair. Ma’am, lovely to meet you.”

He rose, sketched a bow, and left.

“Insolent creature,” she said of him once he’d gone. “He seems to think himself _quite the thing_ , doesn’t he?”

“I—”

“His hair is as long as a _woman’s_! Whatever does he mean by keeping it so? Of course, you realize that he is an unsupportable connection.”

Howard looked toward the hallway, sure that Mr. Noir could easily be close enough to hear what his mother was saying. She, after all, was taking no pains to modulate the volume of her voice. “I’m sorry?”

“You seem to be on terms with him,” his mother said.

“Oh... no, I assure you. We just happened to come into the house at the same time and he... is... he is unaware of... his own,” Howard made a gesture with his hand that suggested a tumble down some stairs or suchlike. Something, anyway, that implied that Mr. Noir was very much beneath both of them. “He’s an amiable man. He talks, you see, to anyone. He simply doesn’t know any better.”

“Hmm,” his mother said. She sniffed and raised her chin. The subject of Mr. Noir was closed. “I do not think you dim enough to suppose that I am about to be diverted from my purpose. I shall speak plainly and quickly so that this interview might terminate as soon as possible. I have come to fetch you back and rescue you from the dissipation in which I find you. Look at you,” she said, looking him over afresh, “you look _rag-tag_ , for goodness sake. You look like a common shopkeep!” Howard did not bother to tell her that he actually looked somewhat better than he had, owning to his new shoes and hat. “Indeed, I should not be seen with you _anywhere_. You look utterly disgraceful.”

To this, he had nothing to say at all. 

His mother took his silence as a counterargument, “I am not here to listen to any obstinacy. You must stop this foolishness and return home. You cannot seriously wish to remain here?”

“I do, actually.”

“For what purpose?” she asked, striking the floor with her stick. “You have, I’m sure, seen how futile your _little efforts_ are doomed to be. Your condition in life has most seriously deteriorated. It should be enough for you to know that I am _ashamed_ of you,” she said, pressing this judgement into him as though it were the sharpened point of a knife, “I am glad that I had the wisdom to prevent your uncle from accompanying me today. If _he_ had seen this, had seen you—”

“Who cares what—"

“Howard, _sit_.” 

In his agitation, Howard had leapt up from his seat. He retook it, bridling his emotions mercilessly. He choked down his inclination to inform her that he was not a dog, or a child, or anything else that she could command. It wasn’t true in any case. She could, and did, command him, and he obeyed.

His mother set down her half-empty glass of port. She had always been an expert in employing silence. She did so now. She allowed the echo of her injunction ring out fully and die in Howard’s imagination before she continued. “Flora is still—”

“Flora?” the name alone was enough to make the hair on the back of his neck stand on end.

“Yes,” his mother said, “ _Flora_ still waits for you.”

“Mother—”

“Your father wants a curate. There is rumor they will soon need a new bishop in Truro. Your father is ideally positioned to gain the parish of Leeds. The living is in Lord Nookah’s gift and he will listen to your father’s recommendation for his replacement. Your cousin only needs you to name the day of your nuptials and you shall be married. Your entire life is only wants for you to come pick it up and start it. It will not do so forever.” 

“I—”

His mother raised her hand, “You are nearly thirty, Howard. It is time to stop behaving like a child and become a man.” She again left a space wherein she shook her head, twisted her hands around her stick, and then, at last, she shook her head, “I blame myself. I indulged you overmuch as a boy, I allowed you to think that your little performances were, oh, _something_ ," she said with a dismissive wave of her hand. "My dear, you must realize now that it simply isn’t the case. I suppose you still play?”

“I do,” Howard said, quietly enough that he hardly heard himself.

His mother looked very sympathetic. Sympathetic, but cold. She sighed, “Let us speak no further on this subject. I will leave you to mull over what I have said. You should understand, Howard, that your father and I were willing to indulge some of this independence of yours, but no longer. We do not wish to have a son of whom we cannot speak, or even think of without _shame_. We want _our_ boy back. We want to be able to be proud of you, but how can we be if this is how you insist upon conducting yourself?”

Howard blinked back this criticism. 

She stood, and Howard stood, and then, as if all that had passed between them had been the most tender and affectionate of familial conversations, she laid her gloved hand on his cheek, and tilted his face to look at her, “Mostly, my dear, I do not want to see you suffer. It appalls me to see you like this.”

“I’m fine,” Howard mumbled.

His mother gave him a look of utter pity. She patted his shoulder, “I am staying with your uncle in Hanover square. Visit me there in two days’ time and we shall continue this discussion.” 

She rapped her stick on the floor in the manner of a judge striking his gavel to signal the conclusion of their interview. She went out without a backward glance.

Howard slumped on the bench of the piano. He hit the keys with his elbow and a dissonant pang rang out unpleasantly. He buried his face in his hands. 

_What did you expect?_

What had he expected? It should have been nothing less, nor anything more.

He sat for a long time, trying to regain his bearings, trying to come to grips with all that she had said. 

Flora... Howard had nearly forgotten her. His only consolation on that front was that neither of them had ever been inclined toward the other. They did not hate one another, but both of them had been sensible to the fact that their marriage would be a complete disaster. Flora wanted to be loved and Howard was incapable of loving her. It had been no small part of his departure from his parents’ house when he discovered that they were intent upon his marrying her in spite of Howard’s objections.

He had thought that the notion would have been let go, even that Flora might have been bound to someone else by now but, evidently, that had not taken place. 

He fisted his hand into his hair and pulled at it, the pain relieving some of his anguish. He wanted, very much, to have a certain quantity of time returned to him, so that he could refute what his mother had said to him, so that he could have made himself tidier, or prepared for her interview with him more. It wouldn't have mattered. Shame and pity were the only two things he could excite in those who did not, by default, despise him. It might have been different if Howard had made a success of himself, but he hadn't. He'd failed, and failed, and failed again and proven her, his mother, right. 

He wanted to destroy something.

He stared at the fire and watched as it died down to embers.

“Is that... how it always goes?” Mr. Noir asked. Howard looked up. Mr. Noir drifted again near the doorway, haunting it like a pale and restless specter. The ghost, perhaps, of some wretched street urchin, but not a waif in search of alms, no; a ragged ghost that saw Howard and had the nerve to look at him and think, _there but for the grace of God go I_. Like everyone else.

“How did it go, precisely?” Howard asked, as though wishing to be told of something that he had not himself experienced, “I suppose you were _listening_.”

“I couldn’t help it,” Mr. Noir said. He seemed unable to keep still. The glimmering finery he wore suddenly seemed fitted to him like a suit of armor meant for someone else.

Howard frowned, “I’m sure not. You are forever entangling yourself where you don’t belong, aren’t you? But what should I expect from someone like you? I’m sure there was a time when your habit of sneaking about served you very well indeed.”

Mr. Noir’s brows drew toward one another, “Someone like me?" he asked. "What? _Low_?"

Howard shrugged meaningfully.

Mr. Noir rolled his eyes, "Whatever. I wasn't trying to listen. Anyone could have heard—” 

Howard stood, “Christ!” he threw up his hand and walked toward the mantelpiece. He spun around to face Mr. Noir, “Why do you never leave me alone? What do you want?”

“I don’t want a damned thing from you. What could you give me anyway?” Mr. Noir said with that superfluity of gesture that was so common to him, and very common _in_ him. “All I came to say was that I hoped you weren’t actually considering what she said, because,” he bit his bottom lip and laid his fist against the doorjamb. “Whatever. Forget it. Go back to wherever you came from if you’d like. Marry whoever the hell this Flora is. It’s nothing to me.”

“It isn’t anything to you,” Howard agreed, studying the mantlepiece intensely. “And yet, you still have to put your nose in. It is an ungentlemanly habit of yours, sir. It is most—" he glanced over at Mr. Noir.

The expression on his face was one Howard had never seen him wear before. He was forcibly struck with the thought that it was incredibly unpleasant to behold and realized, with a sudden, painful clarity, that he had disappointed him. 

Howard could endure many things, could tolerate contempt from almost anyone, but in that same shocking moment of realization, he knew that Mr. Noir’s good opinion was the one he could not stand to lose.

Mr. Noir turned to go.

“Wait,” Howard said, reaching toward him, “wait. Please. I’m... hell. I just,” he shook his head and gripped the edge of the mantel, “I have never had the very best hold on my temper.”

“Seemed to hold it well enough with your mum,” Mr. Noir said.

“Yes. I know. And I know that I have no cause to lose it with you. I simply...” Howard shook his head again, for there was nothing simple about what he wanted to say. Or, perhaps there was. “You did not deserve what I said to you.”

“Alright,” Mr. Noir said with a nod.

“I’m sorry,” Howard clarified.

“Sorry?” Mr. Noir asked, as though confused. “That’s a new one.”

“It shouldn’t be.” Howard looked down at the floor. “I seem always to… to be abominable to you when you try to… I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright. You probably just wasn’t brought up right.”

Howard laughed, “Perhaps not.” He said nothing for a moment. Mr. Noir evidently had nothing to say either. Eventually, Howard cleared his throat, “So, you don’t think I should take my mother’s advice?”

“Christ, no,” Mr. Noir said immediately and so vehemently that Howard laughed again. Mr. Noir smiled, “Even if it isn’t any concern of mine… I don’t want you to go.”

Howard shook his head, “Why not? I’m... fractious and sullen, beastly to you when you don’t deserve it, I can hardly manage an entire conversation with you without... making an arse of myself. I should think you’d want me miles away.”

If there had been a look of disappointment on Mr. Noir’s face before, his expression was now so changed that it quite defied description. “You’re not just bad, you know,” he said, gently. “You’re clever and funny. Talented. And you can be very sweet.”

“Sweet?”

“Yeah, sometimes,” Mr. Noir said, a tentative smile blooming on his face. “Little like that satsuma we had. Sweet but acidic, like. Maybe it ain’t for everyone, but I liked it.” Mr. Noir brushed back his forelock. His hip bumped against the door jamb. He tilted his head sideways so that his face was in almost in profile as he added, “I like you.”

He might have been addressing the door frame for the way his gaze was directed; addressing it _tenderly_. His index finger stroked the wood with a singular fondness, as though that article were some beloved, elevated personage.

Howard’s eyes shied away from this display. “You shouldn’t.” 

“Maybe not, but I do.”

It had almost taken the form of a game, the way his eyes flicked to and from Mr. Noir like a child skipping in the yard. At one moment, he was able to tolerate looking at him, at the next fearful of the same, and then, once he was no longer looking at him, desirous of looking again. 

It was in these little skips that he observed Mr. Noir take a single step into the room so that he was no longer even with the door jamb, but slightly in front of it. He watched him lean against it and clasp his hands behind his back, before he needed to look away and then when he next turned his eyes toward him, Mr. Noir had rested his the back of his head on the door frame so that this face was tipped slightly upward, the whole position of him so strikingly lovely that Howard’s eyes fled the field in panic. 

He began assiduously studying the scene outside the window as though the most amazing thing in the world were out there rather than in the damned room with him.

“I don’t think you should listen to your mum about Yorkshire,” Mr. Noir said softly.

“Believe me, I have no intention of doing so.”

“And… the marriage?”

“That,” Howard said, observing the slowly darkening streets with fanatical scrutiny, “I have even less intention of… doing that.”

There was the sound of cloth rustling. Howard was too fearful to actually check, but he rather thought the sound was possibly the result of some movement on Mr. Noir’s part. “Something wrong with Flora?” 

“No, not at all.” 

“But you won’t marry her.”

“No, neither her, nor any woman. I have never had the particular urge that would lead a man to,” Howard said before he had time to consider what he was saying, and then he did consider it, and found himself finishing his thought, “to marry.” 

He glanced at Mr. Noir to see what, if any, effect these words had had, wholly unsure if they would be taken in the way that he had meant them, and furthermore unsure what to expect if they had been; but Mr. Noir was considering the opposite corner of the room, perhaps decoding the pattern of the wallpaper, and Howard concluded that his meaning had passed unguessed. He wasn’t sure if the notion pleased him.

Mr. Noir pushed himself off the wall, and his eyes and Howard’s eyes connected with a nearly physical force, like something had passed from him and into Howard, a slap, a caress, some pleasant and painful recognition. Howard’s heart leapt into his throat, and a new fear assailed him; namely that he had been very well understood indeed.

“Why’s that?” asked Mr. Noir, taking a step toward him.

“Oh... I just have no... eye for... that sort of… I am not, I suppose, suited, perhaps.” Mr. Noir took another step. Howard tittered nervously, suddenly finding it impossible to keep his fingertips from brushing at the hair on his temple, “I mean, you’ve seen my temper. Imagine exposing some poor woman to that. I shouldn’t want—”

“Ladies are too delicate to deal with you then?” Mr. Noir asked, taking another step. 

“No. Yes. I suppose. Perhaps. In a way.”

Mr. Noir nodded as though Howard were making sense. Still, he advanced. 

Howard willed himself to look away but could not. He was completely absorbed in the other man’s eyes, their mesmeric intensity, for, just as surely as Howard could look nowhere else, Mr. Noir was looking at nothing else. Nothing, but Howard.

“I know what I am,” Howard babbled, slightly breathless. 

“What’s that?” Mr. Noir asked, his head tilting. His hair caught at every source of light in the room as he reached up and twined the end of it around his finger. 

Howard tensed, “I… don’t suppose you’ve ever heard of the condition known as… um… inversion.”

Mr. Noir smirked, “You’ve got a condition?”

“I seem to, yes.”

Mr. Noir still advanced. He moved toward Howard as inexorably as the sun rising over the hills, as though nothing in all of heaven or earth could possibly have stopped him. Howard wanted to step back, but there was nowhere to go. Already, his back was pressed against the mantlepiece, he had thoroughly exhausted the proportions of the room, and, with every step that drew Mr. Noir closer, his avenues for escape grew fewer, and fewer, until he was faced with the reality that he did not have the slightest wish to escape. He wanted, rather desperately, to be caught.

Mr. Noir halted at last, standing close to Howard, closer, even, than he’d stood when he was adjusting Howard’s apparel in the street. Strange to think that Howard had not noticed the intimacy of that act at the time. 

“I hope it’s not contagious,” Mr. Noir said, his voice barely above whisper.

Howard would not have been able to reply if his life depended upon it; indeed, he was scarcely able to form a thought.

He could see nothing but Vince’s face. Every bone, every line, every single smooth curve, and sharp edge; all the poetry of his expressions and music of his tranquility was aimed up at Howard and it was blinding. 

Vince placed his fingertips on either side of Howard’s face. Vertigo overtook him. He was tumbling through a space at once cavernous and close, without fully understanding where he could possibly land until Vince’s lips were on his and all around him was the glorious destruction of his fall.


	12. The Sun Whose Rays

There was nothing else like it, and Howard would never be the same again. How could he be? Whatever creature he’d been previously had been but half alive, unaware of the joy that could come from a sunrise, uneducated in how much the world could be altered in a single minute, let alone in an hour, or a day.

Everything was different, and that after a single kiss. Or perhaps a score of kisses. Howard wasn’t sure how to account them properly, since they had kissed once, and then again, and again, each time connected, seemingly, to the first but wholly different in character and tone.

It was good that Vince had been due in Shoreditch. If he had not been, Howard did not know how they might have ended up. He wanted them to have ended up somehow _together_ as he’d rather frequently imagined, but that required a lot of things that Howard wasn’t entirely ready for. He couldn’t help but worry that Vince would not be pleased with what he saw when he at last beheld Howard in nothing more than his own skin.

When Vince had gone, and it was only he and the upright left, he’d played every passionate piece that he knew, his heart leaping out through his fingertips, until he was too tired to keep his eyes open. He’d tumbled into bed, eager for a new day.

In the morning, he did what was necessary. He snuck past Vince’s room, tucked his magically acquired euros into an envelope and slipped them under the door of Mr. Naboo’s study, and left the house early, with the anticipation of returning that night strongly upon him.

Of magic necklaces, Howard had determined to think little; of his mother’s visit, he determined to think even less. Those things were all behind him. Vince was ahead of him.

His one-sided attachment was not so one-sided after all. It was incredible to think that it was possible, but it might be that Vince was… Howard hesitated to hope for it, but it was just possible that Vince might be in love with him, just as Howard was sure he was in love with Vince.

It was with this notion leavening his sprits that Howard made his way to Brook Street (careful to avoid Hannover Square as he did so), explained himself with greater than usual forbearance to Mrs. Gideon and began with more than his usual amount of cheerfulness to teach Dixon incorrect information about the countries of South America.

He had only just finished explaining how the Congo was the longest river in Brazil when he heard the sound of a throat clearing at the door. Howard turned to see who it was, full well expecting Grahame, perhaps, or one of the other footmen who, doubtless, would try to eject him from the house, but it wasn’t Grahame.

It was someone a thousand times worse.

It was Sir Dixon. “Moon,” he said. “With me. Immediately.”

Well, bollocks. 

Howard followed Sir Dixon out of the school room and down the stairs.

“I’d have sent someone else to fetch you, but no one in this house seems to know who you are. Why do you suppose that is, Moon?” Sir Dixon asked him conversationally.

“I’m sure I don’t have an answer for that, sir.”

“But you’ve noticed? Of course you have. It’s been no end of amusing to me, of course, to listen to you have to fight your way through my staff every morning, but I digress. Curses, Moon. Do you believe in curses?” he asked, pausing to turn and look at Howard.

Twenty-four hours ago, Howard would have been able to quite confidently say no. Or, at least, somewhat confidently. Having a question posed directly had a way of eliminating Howard’s ability to be certain on any point, let alone something so nebulous as _curses_. But, of course, now Howard knew that there was magic, actual magic, and curses seemed not only possible, but probable. Still, he did not think it wise to admit to such. “I’m sure that I don’t, sir.”

“Don’t you?” asked Sir Dixon with a smile. “Ah, but why should you? You’ve never set foot on any soil that wasn’t English. You’ve never been to the dark, strange parts of the world. You’ve never lived through a night that lasted a month together. You’ve never delved deep into a jungle and come out of it with its beating heart in the palm of your hand, or looked into the beady eyes of a crustacean and seen your own doom, have you?”

“Uh... no...”

“No. Well, I have. I have...” he trailed off and fell silent.

Howard waited for him to move or say something further, but Sir Dixon was evidently frozen in place. His eyes drooped like those of a dull Bassett Hound.

“Sir... is, um, this what you wanted me for?”

Sir Dixon shook himself out of his reverie, “Of course not, you absolute moron. No, someone is here to see you.”

“See me?”

“I know, puzzled the hell out of me too. Imagine, someone wanting to see you,” he said with a hearty laugh. He slapped his knee, then took Howard by the shoulder and held him. “But seriously, Moon. You’re a prize arsehole and I hate the sight of you,” he chucked Howard on the chin in a bizarrely chummy fashion. “If I wasn’t so curious, I’d have sent the little prick packing with a flea in his ear, but I am curious. Yes...” Sir Dixon trailed off again, a certain sharpness in his expression, before he settled and said, “Well, come along.”

He led Howard into his study.

Howard was confronted once more with the sight of the posed and stuffed animals baring their fangs, claws and other appendages at him, the room of so overwhelming a nature that he almost missed the absolute vision in emerald and pink that was Vince Noir.

“Howard,” Vince said, immediately, bursting into a grin so wide Howard stalled under the force of the apparent joy he’d caused merely by entering a room, “Timmy Eighty-Eights is dead!”

So inappropriately gleeful was this pronouncement that Howard almost replied with _congratulations_. “Sorry?” he asked instead.

Vince strode toward Howard, clearly about to explain further, but Sir Dixon interrupted him by laughing abruptly and for no apparent reason. Vince stopped where he was and turned to look at him and then aimed a glance at Howard. Howard only shook his head, since, no, this was not particularly _normal_ behavior for his employer.

Sir Dixon wiped his eyes. “Pray excuse me. Just remembered the end of the Tell-Tale Heart. Hilarious. Do you know, I think, Moon, I think you should have the rest of the day. Clearly, some intimate of your friend has passed on. Perhaps you need help with funeral arrangements, Mr.... Noir, was it?”

“Yeah,” Vince said. 

“I’m sure that’s not—”

Sir Dixon cut off Howard with a wave of his hand, “No need to thank me, Moon. Just go. Please. I insist.”

Vince was grinning again, and Howard wanted to smile too, but could not. He had a terrible feeling that _something_ was wrong. But then, so he usually did, he supposed.

He shrugged at Vince and said, “Thank you, sir. I appreciate—”

“What did I say?” Sir Dixon asked, sharply. “No need to thank me,” he turned his back on them and went to his desk. His fingers trailed over the corner of his desk, then up to the edge of the same violin that had been on his desk when Howard had last been in the room. He caressed curvaceous side of the instrument, “None. At. All.”

Howard stared at Sir Dixon’s back, his flesh creeping. Every instinct he had insisted that something was wrong, but there was nothing at all to prove it, save for what Howard knew of Sir Dixon’s character. Perhaps, he posited, it was merely a capricious scheme to sack him, give him the afternoon off, then fire him in the morning for scarpering. 

Perhaps it was something worse. Perhaps…

“Howard,” Vince whispered, looking toward the door.

Perhaps it didn’t matter.

Howard nodded and followed him out.

******

“He’s a bit weird,” Vince said once they were out in front of the house.

“He... is,” Howard agreed. 

Vince shrugged, “But, nevermind. You’re about to get your start!” He strode urgently toward the street with his hand raised toward a handsome, “Right, normally I’d let you faff about and walk, but we need to leg it to Shoreditch before Johnny can get a word in on Fossil. Imagine the look on your mother’s face when you tell her you’ve got a real job. She’ll have to eat her words and then—”

“What are you talking about?”

Vince spun toward him, “Timmy Eighty-Eights _died_! Fucking hell, Howard. Keep up, yeah?”

“Why should I care that some poor gentleman has— what do you mean, a real job?”

Vince rolled his eyes, “Timmy Eighty-Eights was only the house pianist at the Velvet Onion. And, since he’s _dead_ , that means we need a replacement. Quid pro quo: you!”

“I think you mean ergo. But, Vince—”

“It’s going to be brilliant! I know! I just have to get you over there quick, otherwise Fossil’s going to give the job to Johnny Top Hats.”

“The two-hatted berk that tried to get you kicked out of your act?”

“Yeah,” Vince said with a nod. “Something like that. Look, Fossil said that he would give you a listen if I could get you there before—what’s wrong?”

Howard frowned, “I have no intention of auditioning at this... _Velvet Onion_ or whatever you called it. What sort of name is that for a music hall anyway?”

“A proper one!” Vince insisted, “and why not?” he added as the handsome drew near. “It’s perfect! We could work together, you’ll have a _proper job_. I know it’s not the Royal Symphony or anything, but it’ll pay you better than this place, and you won’t have to deal with that madman upstairs anymore, that room we were in was an absolute nightmare, wasn’t it? And, probably, people will bother to learn who you are. Do you know the housekeeper swore up and down that you weren’t in there? ‘Course, I knew you had to be because— um, anyway, it’ll be worlds better for you. And you can always leave, you know. Go someplace better when the opportunity presents. If you want. But, Howard, it’ll be perfect,” he said with perhaps the largest smile that had ever existed. 

“You don’t understand,” Howard said.

Vince looked at him with some perplexity. “What don’t I understand?”

Howard felt illness creep over him, “I can’t... I don’t...”

Vince came toward him but did not touch him, “What’s wrong? Just try and breathe a bit, yeah?”

Howard shook his head, “I can’t do an audition! I can’t... I freeze up. I just... I lose...”

“You get the chokes?” Vince asked.

Howard looked at him. He had never heard his affliction named before, but now, hearing Vince say the word, he recognized it. “Yes,” he answered emphatically. “That’s why, one of the reasons why, I never,” Howard waved his hand in the air like a fizzling rocket.

“Why didn’t you say so before?” Vince asked. “All we have to do is get them off you, though we hardly have the time now,” he raised his thumb to his mouth and chewed on his cuticle, then a light came into his eyes. “This is an emergency, yeah?”

Howard frowned, “I don’t know that this is an emergency per say...”

“But we need to cure you quick, don’t we?”

“I... guess?”

“Right. Okay. So, listen. I think I’ve got an idea. Get in the cab, we don’t have time to waste.”

Vince dictated their address to the driver and promised him an extra euro if he made it fast. He hopped up next to Howard and began to relay his plan.

They had not precisely agreed that they were never going to touch the necklace again, Vince emphasized that point several times as though it were a linchpin critical to his argument. Howard had to agree that they had not, but he had not realized that they needed to. He’d thought it was understood that they would not. 

He could still remember a few references to _dire consequences_ rather well, but Vince pointed out that those were only going to happen if the necklace _fell into the wrong hands_ which could hardly be their hands, as they were not shamen themselves, but rather simple performers (he was being grand in prematurely including Howard in this description) and they were not about to use it for any malfeasance or mischief.

Howard was not wholly convinced by his reasoning, and he did his best to argue against him, but his arguments were tepid, vague objections at best. He was too enthralled by his companion, and, in all honesty, far too tempted by the thought that he might be rid of the crippling debility that had so long prevented him from achieving his dreams. It was the one coupled with the other that effectively muffled the shouting objections of Howard’s reason and rendered them nothing more than a feeling of dull unease. 

Once Howard had ceased to even _whisper_ an objection, Vince proceeded to present him with a plan. It would be simple enough, easy as anything, (these, too, being oft repeated phrases that did not so much convince Howard as make him feel even _less_ at ease) for Vince to get Mr. Naboo out of his study so that Howard could sneak in and use the necklace (“Only for a minute, yeah? Wish on it, then put it back, quick smart, and then you’re out of there.”) and then Howard would signal to Vince the success of his mission by playing something upon the piano, and then they’d speed off to Shoreditch for Howard’s audition. 

Howard would be brilliant, Johnny Top Hats would be out on his arse; in short, it would all work out.

He still did not like it, but even as he gathered up some semblance of his will to raise a final objection, he looked over at Vince and saw that he was vibrant with excitement, with that lurid, living enthusiasm that made him utterly irresistible and whatever objection he’d wanted to raise died on his tongue.

When they arrived home, Vince bade the cabbie wait for them and then he dashed up the stairs, urging Howard along, his whole body dancing, almost, in his eagerness. As soon as he shut the door behind them, he went up on his toes and kissed Howard. 

“I wanted to do that the whole way over,” he confessed with a pretty blush before he leaned forward and kissed him again, a little more hungrily than he had the first time. He pulled away, his mouth twisted in a mischievous smirk, “I’m so happy you’re...” he played with the lapels of Howard’s coat, then shook his head, apparently to settle his thoughts, “Alright, let’s make this quick. Go into the parlor until you hear me and Naboo go downstairs.”

Howard nodded, incapable of anything else, and Vince rewarded him with another quick kiss before he hurried down the hall. He stopped outside of Mr. Naboo’s study and then waved Howard toward the parlor, which spurred Howard into action. He’d rather forgotten that his agreement to the scheme implied his participation.

Howard listened while Vince exchanged some pleasantries with Mr. Naboo. He was at his winningest. He laughed when Mr. Naboo flat out asked him what he wanted, then dallied a little bit, claiming he just wanted to see how things were going and then, when Mr. Naboo replied to him with a very flat _fine_ as though that should have settled Vince’s curiosity, Vince laughed again.

Listening to the exchange, Howard had some hope that Mr. Naboo might not fall under the spell of Vince’s charm, that he might resist and not leave his study and Howard would be spared that way, but then Vince mentioned something about his account, said he wanted to have a look at the books (whatever on earth _that_ meant) and Mr. Naboo sighed and allowed himself to be drawn out into the hallway.

“Not more clothes,” Mr. Naboo said as they crossed into the dining room.

“I’m thinking chartreuse is going to come back in a big way, actually,” Vince said and then Howard heard him no more.

Howard’s mouth felt curiously dry. He had a brief argument with his feet. They seemed to want to stay put, even though he was urging them to move. Eventually, they complied.

There was no one upstairs to observe him, yet Howard couldn’t help sneaking. He took soft steps, worried that any creak of floorboard or heavy footfall would be all too easily heard down in the kitchen and that, being heard, Mr. Naboo would be upstairs like a shot.

Fresh dread at the thought of committing any transgression against Mr. Naboo assailed him when he recalled that he was _proper magic_. Howard tried to swallow his nerves but could not. He had to settle for rolling his sandpapery tongue around in his mouth and pretending that he was merely in need of some water.

Mr. Naboo’s study was dim, the curtain having been drawn shut, and it had that prickly, smoky odor in it that so frequently hung on to the man himself. Howard could see why. A hookah was still smoking at the foot of Mr. Naboo’s desk and Howard assumed he must have been enjoying some strange, foreign tobacco.

He did not allow himself to be distracted from his purpose by any further meditations or observations. He went directly to the shelf where he knew the box to be, lifted the mass of papers that covered it and pulled it out. He held the box in his hands for a moment and stared down at the shining surface of it. He tapped the edge with his fingers. His mind conjured, unbidden, the slow, inevitable marching of the second movement of Beethoven’s 7th Symphony.

Inevitable. That’s precisely what it was. He would do this, he had already allowed himself to be persuaded to do it; it had only to be done. 

Howard pushed open the top of the box and there, glimmering with forbidden promise, was the necklace. 

Howard grimaced at it. The glimmering gold and green ( _glimmering_ despite, or perhaps in defiance of the low light) worked a seduction upon him. In its surface, Howard saw everything that he wanted.

He wanted to prove people wrong, to show the world that he had a gift, and if that led to recognition, then he would take it, if it led to fame, he’d take that too, and yes, if there were riches to be had, then fine. He’d have them as well.

It was none of these things, though, that caused him to take up the necklace and hold it, to dismiss the curious warmth it exuded as mere fancy, to ignore the pealing bells in his mind that warned that something was not right. Howard wanted to prove his brilliance, he’d always wanted that, but his reason for wanting it had changed.

For Vince, to please Vince, to earn his love, to earn his pride, to keep him... what else had Howard to offer but the talent that he, as he was, could no more put to use than he could pluck a star out of the sky? He needed to be able to play. He needed to be great. He needed to be worthy.

All of this flashed through his mind in no more than an instant, but a singular question loomed in large text: _what do you want?_

He wanted to be rid of what Vince had called his chokes, but he felt a mental dissonance. Innately, he knew that wishing something away would not work. He had to wish _for_ something. That was the magic of the necklace. It could only acquire. 

_What do you want?_ the same insidious question again. His own thought, surely, and yet whispered as though by a strange voice.

_What do you want?_

“Confidence,” Howard whispered aloud.

 _Confidence?_ he asked of himself.

“I—” he already had _confidence_ he realized. He just didn’t have very much of it, or, at least, it failed him in front of a crowd. What he needed was the confidence to perform, the ability to be unafraid of catching attention, he needed... “Vince’s confidence.”

Like the pleased murmur of a tuning fork layered perfectly over a pure note, Howard felt every one of his thoughts align. He closed his hand around the emerald, “I wish I had the confidence of Vince Noir.”

There was no sound, no sight to indicate anything had happened; there was only a feeling in Howard’s breast, like the release of a sigh, like a slow unwinding, like a blanket drawn across cold skin, and then that, too, was gone.

He looked around Mr. Naboo’s study and caught the eye of a small skull. The skull grinned at him with a psychotic malevolence. 

“Shut up,” Howard said to it. He returned the necklace to its nest within the box, then replaced the box in its hiding place. It seemed to him that there was nothing further to be done. It had either worked or it had not; he wasn’t any better off for trying again. The longer he stood in the study, the longer Vince was downstairs trying to distract Mr. Naboo. 

Just as stealthily as he had entered, he crept back down the hall and into the parlor.

The upright, familiar and loyal friend that it was, looked cheerful against the wall. Howard dragged his hand across the top of it in greeting, then he sat and rolled through a quick scale. He waited for his fingers to tangle, for the objection that he might be heard to raise itself, but it didn’t come. He ran the length of the keyboard, practiced a trill. 

He flawlessly practiced a trill.

He looked to his right, saw the tower of songbooks next to the piano and picked up the first one off the top. He flipped it open without even looking at the cover. 

The piece was simple. Simple was fine. He just needed a test. 

Vince was home, he reminded himself. Mr. Naboo was home. They would both hear it if he made a mistake. He ran over the thought. He waited for it to slip into the well-worn grooves that would direct him into the heart of his panic, but it did not. 

He looked over the notes, placed his fingers on the keys, and played the sweet introductory phrase. Nothing. Nothing at all. He kept on, worked the vocal line in with his playing, reading the words of the song along with the music, unafraid.

_The sun, whose rays  
Are all ablaze  
With ever-living glory,  
Does not deny  
His majesty  
He scorns to tell a story,_

Howard embellished the melody, elaborated on the theme with his left hand. He still played the piece as it was written, but he was adding to it, complicating it, turning it into a paean to the sunrise, to the sun itself.

_He don't exclaim,  
"I blush for shame,  
So kindly be indulgent."  
But, fierce and bold,  
In fiery gold,  
He glories all effulgent,  
I mean to rule the earth  
As he the sky—_

Howard had only got that far when he stopped. He raised his fingers to his lips, overcome with emotion. He turned and saw Vince standing just behind him, his face shining with the purest, most radiant joy imaginable. 

Howard stood.

“That was beautiful, Howard, I—"

Howard strode to him, placed his hands on either side of his face, and kissed him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More links!
> 
> A couple passionate pieces that Howard probably played:
> 
> [Liszt- Un Sospiro](https://youtu.be/L42sbnQxEmw)
> 
> [Liszt- Libestraume No. 3](https://youtu.be/MBOa-2b4uQQ)
> 
> The song that Howard thinks of when picking up the necklace:
> 
> [Beethoven: Symphony No. 7 in A Major, Op. 92 - 2. Allegretto](https://youtu.be/Vi05EG6sTVQ)  
> 
> 
> And Gilbert and Sullivan finally get their due:
> 
> [The Sun Whose Rays from The Mikado](https://youtu.be/l5EAIcGitAM)


	13. The Velvet Onion

The music hall was rather what Howard had expected it to be; a bit dirty, a bit squalid, the finery a peeling varnish that did little to conceal the true quality of the establishment. The marquee in front proudly advertised _a variety of entertainments for the price of a single admission_ with featured names being Jacques le Cube, Mama Zoom, and Lester Corncrake. Howard was a little surprised that Vince’s name was nowhere in evidence, having rather expected him to be something of a draw, but then, he supposed, perhaps the names were changed based on the evening’s performances.

Vince led him past the front door and around the side to the stage entrance, reiterating how well Howard was sure to do. Howard, for once, didn’t have heightened sense of smell that nearly became taste that he usually did under stress. He felt only a flutter that was almost as much anticipation as it was nerves.

Vince turned to face him just before he opened the door, “Alright, so it’ll probably be a bit—” he stopped abruptly and then grinned, “You’re smiling.”

“I am,” Howard said. “I... I’m _excited_.”

“Aren’t you usually?”

Howard shook his head. “I’ve never been anything but terrified when it comes to performing.”

“Really?” Vince asked, highly perplexed. There was something innocent in the way he posed the question, something so intensely endearing, as though he truly could not fathom any such thing. 

Howard felt his desire rising up again. 

This man, this miraculous, glorious man, who had helped him, who had guided him, and chosen him, and been his friend when no one else was; had healed him, fixed that within him which was broken.

How could Howard not want him?

He had enough control to restrain himself from acting upon his impulses, but Vince must have been able to read the conflict in his expression well enough. He shifted his hips, his posture slipping in the manner of a salacious Roman statue so that he looked wholly alluring. He reached back and flipped his long hair over his shoulder, trailed his fingers through the silken darkness.

He bit the corner of his lip, “We better go inside, yeah?”

Howard nodded his agreement.

Vince placed his hand upon the door handle, “You’re going to be amazing,” he said, and, for once, Howard believed it.

There was a patch of darkness in front of them for about three feet or so, but with arms that stretched wide on either side that they crossed through. Vince parted the curtain in front of them.

If the front of the music hall had looked disreputable, the back looked an absolute flop-house. It seemed to be storage space, dressing room, and construction area all at once.

It was densely crowded. There were girls in varying states of dress laughing with one another across the room, a woman riding a penny-farthing while eating biscuits spiraling narrowly around half-finished set pieces, a troupe of small dogs that seemed, independent of any human direction, to be arranging and leaping through hoops and onto tables and prancing about on their hind legs in a sort of pirouetting dance, a long-faced gentleman who, while not in the uniform of his act, Howard easily picked out as a Harlequin, based simply on the eloquence of his gestures and facial expressions as he wordlessly communicated with his Columbine, and a man who, apparently, had a cube for a head. Howard gave him a long look.

In the middle of all this chaos stood a rather squat, pug-faced man, who seemed to have a unique gift for vacillating between extreme rage, utter servility, and a sort of quixotic stupidity with a rapidity that suggested a mental imbalance. It was toward this man that Vince led Howard. 

“Mr. Fossil,” he said over his shoulder to Howard, “Just ignore most of what he says and don’t mention the Crimea.”

One of the dogs hopped up to Vince and yapped at him. He looked down, “All right, Mashmallow?” 

The dog yapped again, a little longer this time. 

Vince shook his head, “Well, I told Pickles it was going to be too tight. Look, I’ll sort it later,” Vince said, “I’ve got to talk to Fossil.” 

The dog gave Howard a look then yapped again. 

“Yeah, this is him.” 

Another bit of yapping. 

“Yeah,” Vince confirmed with a pleased smile on his face, “Thanks.”

Vince reached down and gently rubbed the dog’s ear. Its pink tongue darted out and gave him a quick lick on his hand, then pranced off.

“What...?”

“That’s just Marshmallow. She’s likes a gab. I’ll have to introduce you to all the dogs. You’ll love them.”

Howard was so puzzled by what had very much seemed to be a conversation between Vince and a Maltese that he jumped nearly six inches in the air at the piercing cry of, “Vincey!”

It was Mr. Fossil, his heavily jowled face spit with a grin, his eyes lit with an almost psychotic delight. “How’s my special apple-sauce beauty boy?”

“Hello, Mr. Fossil,” Vince said formally. He put his hand on Howard’s arm and Mr. Fossil seemed to take in Howard for the first time. 

He looked Howard up and down even as Howard returned the favor, taking in the too-tight powder-blue waistcoat, the coat that was at least forty years out of fashion, the breeches and hose he wore in place of trousers... 

“Who the hell is this idiot?” Mr. Fossil asked.

“This is my mate, Howard,” Vince said, smiling. “He’s the pianist I told you about.”

Mr. Fossil made a face, “You sure? He looks like a revenant.”

Howard bristled, about to insist that he very definitely _had not_ crawled out of any graves, no sir, but Vince tightened his grip on Howard’s shoulder, perhaps as a reminder to remain impassive. He laughed as though Mr. Fossil had made a joke and then said, “He’s here to audition for the opening.”

“What opening?” Mr. Fossil asked.

“You know, Timmy Eighty-Eights’ old job.”

“Oh,” Mr. Fossil made a face like a fallen souffle, “Actually, Vince, Johnny Top Hats—”

“Johnny Top Hats is shit. Next to my mate, that is. And you said he could have an audition if I got him here before four.”

“I did?” Mr. Fossil asked.

“Yeah!” Vince insisted. “Look, you just have to hear him play and—”

“Well, well, well. Looks like the little wagtail has a friend after all.”

Howard turned toward this new voice in the room, as, it seemed, did nearly everyone else. Standing so as to be dramatically back lit was a man dressed in the absolute height of fashion but with two tall top hats perched atop his head. He sneered at Howard, then turned his derisive attention toward Vince. 

“I thought you were just spinning yarns again, but I guess someone likes you after all.” There were some snickers, but one of the dogs growled. Johnny gave it a nasty look. “Fossil, I thought I had the job locked up.”

“Well, I thought so too, Johnny, but I told Vince that I’d give this clown an audition,” Mr. Fossil said, jerking his thumb at Howard.

“I’d just send him back to the circus,” Johnny paused with an air of _see what I did there?_ that Howard found incredibly grating, “and save yourself some time. You know that when Noir promises gold, he brings back dross. And this fellow don’t look like he’s going to break the pattern, does he?”

“Howard is twelve times the pianist you are,” Vince said fiercely.

“Is he?” Johnny turned his attention to Howard, “He don’t look like he could play chopsticks.”

“I think you’ll find yourself sorely mistaken, sir,” Howard said.

“You got game, then, son?”

“I have, sir. Loads of game. So much game, I’m practically a game preserve. I have a gamekeeper, keeping guard on all my game, sir.”

“That right?” Johnny glared at Vince, “You told this boy who he’s dealing with, Noir?” he cracked his fingers and turned toward Howard, “Johnny Top Hats,” he said, as though his name should have struck fear into Howard’s heart.

Howard sniffed derisively, “I’ve never heard of you.”

There was a collective gasp. Mr. Fossil _ooo_ ’ed, and Vince snorted a laugh.

Johnny narrowed his eyes, “What’s your name, mate?”

“It’s Howard Moon. And I am no mate of yours.”

“You know, Moon, I don’t think I like you,” he looked at Vince, “and I know I don’t like your friend. Don’t suppose you want to make your _audition_ interesting, do you?”

“Interesting?”

“Yeah. We’ll both audition, so it’s fair-like, and loser is out of here. Or, in your case, _he’s_ out of here.” Johnny smiled cruelly at Vince as he stalked toward him like some sort of dickish panther with an extra hat on his head.

Instinctively, Howard stepped into Johnny’s path. Johnny had to crane his neck up to look Howard in the eye. Howard glared down at him, “That’s fine by me.”

“Confident?”

For the first time in his life, Howard was able to answer yes.

“Then let’s do it.” Johnny snapped his fingers, “Girls, get me the piano.”

Immediately, a pair of the half-dressed girls leapt into action and wheeled an upright piano from behind the curtain. 

Mr. Fossil looked between the two men and then shouted, “Looks like we have a piano-off!” He bit the end off a cigar and lit it, somehow rubbing his tits aggressively at the same time.

No one seemed to care, so Howard assumed that this was normal behavior. He did his best to ignore it.

Johnny sat down on the bench. “What’s your game, then son? Alf Allerton? George Ware?”

“How about you play what you like, I play what I like,” Howard said.

Johnny adjusted his hats so that they were even more precariously perched on his head. He rolled his shoulders and began to play some drivel with 4/4 timing and an insufferably simple tune. Howard waited for something to happen, for Johnny to show some damned chops, but he didn’t. He just played the childish little tune while everyone _nodded along_ like he was doing brilliantly. 

Howard had never heard such utter tripe in his life. He could have played it with one hand.

When Johnny had finished, he shot Howard a defiant look, “What do you think of that, then?”

“Rubbish,” Howard said simply.

Johnny shot up from the bench, “Yeah? Let’s see you do better.”

Howard looked back at Vince.

“Go on, Howard. Get him,” Vince said, his eyes alight with eagerness.

His wish was Howard’s command. 

He took his seat. The way Johnny had spoken to Vince, and looked at him, with that dismissive sneer... it was enough to make Howard’s blood boil. This humiliation, he decided, would be complete.

He looked down at the keys in front of him. The faces of the crowd blurred, his senses tunneled down until all he knew was his own heartbeat and the sight of the keys in front of him. 

He wasted no time. His fingers met the keys and he was in the middle of a torrent. That was the nickname of the piece, a Chopin Etude that was as brutal in pace as a downpour. It was a spiraling, spinning dervish of strokes that layered up around one another, trills, flourishes, all relentless sixteenth notes, perfectly placed or the whole thing was a mess, the melody traveling from the right hand to the left and back again, and Howard rolled through it like it was butter.

A scant two minutes and the thing was done.

The whole room was silent.

He opened his eyes, unaware that he had closed them at some point, and saw Mr. Fossil, his cigar hanging from his gaping mouth like a ripe fruit drooping off a tree. It fell off his lip and tumbled down his front, leaving a trail of ash.

“Holy fuck nuggets,” he said.

Johnny Top Hats looked decidedly green before he turned on his heel swearing an oath against the injustice of having such a man ( _such a man_ , apparently, being Howard) brought in specifically to show him up, by the _bleeding whooperup_ (who Howard understood to mean Vince) and then disappeared into the gloom before the stage door slammed shut behind him.

Howard might have felt concerned that he’d gone a bit overboard (after all, a simpler Etude probably would have sufficed), but then he saw Vince and every other person’s opinion failed to matter him.

Vince was glowing, grinning, absolutely buzzing with a delight that could not be misinterpreted. And it was Howard who had writ that expression on his face.

Howard flicked his coat and turned to Mr. Fossil, “So? Have I got it?”

“Uh... yeah,” Mr. Fossil said, simultaneously brushing the front of his ill-fitting waistcoat and stooping to pick up his cigar. “We can review papers now if you want.”

“Great.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another couple of links!
> 
> Johnny's audition piece:
> 
> [George Ware- The Boy in the Gallery](https://youtu.be/ncdnLOLG_ng)
> 
> Howard's audition piece:
> 
> [Chopin - Etude Op. 10 No. 4 (Torrent)](https://youtu.be/Jjxq6IFNLVM)


	14. A Celebration

Howard negotiated his terms with Vince at his side, Fossil very amenable to his suggestions for rates of pay, an advance on that rate, to nearly anything Howard put to him. 

Howard might have thought that he was dreaming were it not for the thickening cloud of cigar smoke that both gave him a headache and made his eyes water. At any other time, this would have stemmed the tide of his high spirits, but not that night. Nothing, whatsoever, could possibly have disturbed him. 

Once his negotiation with Fossil was concluded, he and Vince were free to go until rehearsal the next day. Vince only paused to introduce Howard to the dogs (“I told you I could talk to animals, didn’t I?”) and then they left the same way they had come in. 

Darkness had come down over London’s shoulders while they were inside, and the streets were full. The crowds didn’t stop Vince, however, from walking a bit too close to Howard and bumping against his shoulder occasionally. 

“You were brilliant!” he enthused, for perhaps the fortieth time as he danced his way around a puddle. “You blew them away. I’ve never seen anything like it. I’ve never _heard_ anything like it.”  
  
He looked up at Howard with a grin. Though it was dark, and Howard could not be certain, he didn’t doubt that Vince’s cheeks wore that flush that seemed to come upon him when he was well and truly pleased, and, though they’d agreed to find their way to a meal on their way home, Howard found himself overtaken by quite a different type of hunger. 

A dark alley yawned to their right and, without thinking twice, Howard pulled Vince into it. 

Vince yelped, “What are you doing you nutter?” he asked with a laugh. 

Howard didn’t answer him, merely pulled him deeper into the dark, around a narrow corner and behind a stack of barrels so that they were completely obscured from view. Were it not for the clear sky and the half-light of the moon streaming weakly into the alley, Howard would not have been able to see Vince’s face at all, but Vince’s pale skin caught even the slightest amount of light. His strong features were picked out of the dark like notes on a harp, his lambent eyes were nearly a source of light in their own right. 

Vince’s laugh slowly tricked out, until he was merely smiling. Howard slid his hand up Vince’s arm to his neck and felt his pulse fluttering against his palm. “I’d like to kiss you,” he said, hardly recognizing the sound of his own voice.  
  
Vince’s eyelids drooped slightly, “Alright.” 

Underneath the bent sounds of hooves on cobbles and distant murmurs of conversation, Howard could hear the sound of Vince’s breathing as he stepped closer to him. He lowered his head as Vince tilted his face up and then sound, and vision, and every other sense only knew one thing. 

_Vince_. 

Howard had only meant to relieve something of the pressure of his desire, but the pressure was not relived, it was intensified. Vince or he or both of them had opened their mouths and Vince or he, or again, both of them had found that they were not standing nearly close enough. 

Vince backed Howard up until his shoulders were resting on solid brick. Howard clutched him around the shoulders, then around the waist, then at the hips, and he pulled Vince tight against him, aware that Vince had to be able to feel the effect he was having on him, and unsure why it was that he no longer felt any qualms about allowing him to do so. 

Perhaps because Howard was evidently having a similar effect upon Vince. 

Howard slouched down the wall so that Vince was positioned more fully between his thighs and he rolled his hips, grinding against Vince’s stiffening prick, a heady spike of lust spearing under his belly. Howard groaned against the sensation, the sound escaping around Vince’s lips and into the dark air.  
  
Vince made a similarly inarticulate noise then laughed, “Christ. Fucking hell, Howard, we’d better…” he trailed off. He made a move to step away, but seemed unable to actually make himself do it. Howard’s hold on him, anyway, was not the thing that stopped him from moving.  
  
“What?” Howard asked. He traced Vince’s cheekbone to his sideburns and teased just at the edge of his hair. At some point he’d lost his hat.  
  
Vince shivered against him, “We better get someplace. You know? After last night, I... Jesus, I’d have bet my life that you weren’t... that... that you were innocent.”  
  
“I am,” Howard said, not in the least ashamed to admit it.  
  
“Oh,” Vince said. “Then... we don’t have to... I mean, I want to, just so we’re clear, but if you’d rather not, I’m perfectly happy to take it at your pace.”  
  
“No, I want to,” Howard said, again in the same low register that made him sound strange to his own ears. “I want you to have me, to fuck me.”  
  
Vince tittered, as close to nervous as Howard had ever known him to be, “Well that’s a bleeding offer, innit?” He stepped out of Howard’s arms at last. He adjusted himself and looked around until he found his hat and put it on again. “Come on, let’s go home.” He looked back at Howard, “And don’t pull me into any more alleys and tempt me to do something unwise, alright?”

Howard gave his word that he would not. Indeed, he knew that he should not have tempted fate even as far as he already had done. Self-reproach, however, did not follow in the wake of this acknowledgement. He had never felt so strongly unconcerned by what _might_ happen. 

Back out on the street, Vince turned into a fidgeting, twitching jumble. He tapped his fingers against his hip, reached up to touch his hair, tucked his hands into his pockets and took them out again; a thousand small gestures that spoke of his own eagerness better than words ever could have done, and of words he, for once, seemed to have few.

Therefore, it was a quiet walk, but the silence between them was like that which hangs above an orchestra waiting for the first twitch of the conductor’s baton. It was a silence thick with anticipation.

They came into their street, and up to their door, and then at last were behind their door and, as soon as the aperture through which they had entered was closed, Vince turned toward Howard and there was no further need for pretense. 

It echoed the kiss they had shared in the same place earlier in the afternoon, but this was the hungry, ravenous kiss of the alleyway; it was attack and surrender at once. Vince shucked his overcoat and Howard’s, and their hats, his hands busily divesting each of them of their outerwear before he clasped Howard around the wrists and began pulling him up the stairs. 

The process was not an elegant one, the pair of them stumbled and bumped against the wall and the stairs, neither willing to stop touching the other, to break contact either at their lips or their hands. It was inevitable that one of them should misstep, and this Vince did about halfway up the stairs, sliding down onto his arse. He pulled Howard down with him and over him. 

Howard was dimly aware that they were causing a racket, but Vince was laughing and making no move to disentangle himself or move in any way other than to kiss Howard again, and Howard supposed that if he was so incautious, it was likely safe for them both to be so. 

If he had been in the frame of mind to appreciate it, he’d have realized that he wasn’t behaving at all like himself. He had spent nearly thirty years hiding this deepest of secrets. That he was suddenly divested of the fear of discovery was strange to say the least, but the haze of his lust had blinded him to anything that wasn’t the warm touch of Vince’s hands, or the taste of his lips. He would not have known it if they had suddenly been transported to the middle of Piccadilly Circus; that he was unable to spare a moment for self-reflection was no surprise. 

All he knew was an unfamiliar animal drive, his every heartbeat coming quicker and more forcefully as the insistence of his prick grew. His hips began to rock of their own will, setting a rhythm that Vince’s breathing seemed to echo almost at once. 

Vince moaned and finally started disentangling himself, “My room... we’ve— It’s twelve fucking steps away,” he said in a tone that sounded as though he was trying to fortify himself with this statement as much anything, “Come on.” 

Vince pushed at him until Howard stumbled up and then Vince stood, took Howard’s hand and pulled him the rest of the way to his room. 

The room was unlit and would have been completely dark were it not for the single window that overlooked the street and admitted both moonlight and the faintest flicker of streetlamp. It was fine. Howard had no wish to see anything more than what he did as soon as they entered, which was the curtained four-poster dominating the back wall.

He pulled Vince against him and resumed where they had left off. 

Vince kicked the door shut and guided him toward the bed, his hands plucking at the buttons of Howard’s coat without making any move to undo them. “Ah, fuck,” he said, breathlessly, “This is really your first time?” 

“Yes,” Howard confirmed. 

“Fuck,” Vince swore once more. “We have to slow down a bit.” 

“Why?” Howard asked, his hands dropping down to the front of Vince’s trousers. 

Vince laughed as Howard palmed his cock, “Because we’re going to do this properly so that you enjoy it.” 

“I am enjoying it.” 

“Yeah, I can tell. But you won’t be if I don’t take my time with—” he gasped as Howard pressed more firmly against him, “Jesus. You’re going to kill me.” 

“You don’t sound like you mind.” 

“Some things are worth dying for,” Vince said. He started pulling on Howard’s cravat. He rolled it around his hand as he unwound it. “And some things are worth waiting for. Just have some patience and you’ll find out for yourself.” He tossed the cravat away. 

Howard had only just been counseled toward patience, but it seemed a nearly impossible directive to obey. He traced the length of Vince’s prick through his trousers, felt the hard and surprisingly long line of it from head to base with a firm, steady pressure. 

Vince shuddered, “Patience,” he said with apparent difficulty. He took Howard’s hands and put them both down at Howard’s side. 

Vince crouched down. Immediately Howard felt another hot jolt of lust, but Vince’s hands crept down the back of Howard’s calf to his ankle and went nowhere near his cock. 

“Boots,” Vince said by way of explanation as he undid the buttons on the side of one boot then the other. He pulled them off Howard’s feet and then stood again, trailing his hands the whole long way up Howard’s legs. He slid his hands up Howard’s sides, up to his chest, then followed the line of his lapels to the first buttons there. Vince’s attentions were slow and careful, his hands caressing Howard with every button he undid, his eyes utterly focused on his task. 

Howard’s hands itched to grab him, to pull him close, to drive him back to haste, but he mastered himself, only able to because it was obvious that Vince was finding the change of pace just as difficult as he. His hands, Howard noticed, were slightly unsteady. 

Vince pushed Howard’s coat off his shoulders and tossed it in the same direction he’d discarded the cravat, then he started on the buttons of Howard’s waistcoat. 

“This seems a bit unfair,” Howard said. “You seem to be remaining dressed whereas I,” he watched as Vince’s fingers like a cat might watch a struggling bird, “seem to be becoming undressed.” 

“It is unfair,” Vince agreed, “but it’s helping you learn your lesson, about patience, you see.” He paused in the process of undoing buttons and tucked his hand under Howard’s waistcoat to tease his nipple through his shirt. Howard hissed out a breath. “That good, Howard?” 

“Yes,” Howard gritted out. 

“Good. Now have patience,” Vince said. “Good, patient boys get rewards, yeah?” 

“Like what?” Howard asked, his voice tight as Vince drew concentric spirals of pleasure on his chest. 

Vince tilted his head and Howard watched, transfixed, as his tongue raked over his incisor, “Like this,” he said, tweaking Howard’s nipple so that a thrum of sensation traveled down his spine. 

“And what else?”

“Be a good boy and you’ll find out.” 

Vince stopped and resumed unbuttoning. He slipped off Howard’s waistcoat and threw that, too, away. He ran both his hands from Howard’s waist up his body to his shoulders and slid his hands underneath Howard’s braces. He tucked his thumbs over the braces, followed the course of Howard’s arms as he pushed them down, the whole act taking somewhere around three damned hours to complete. 

Vince looked down, his eyelashes fanned across his cheeks, as he took Howard’s hands in his. He studied Howard’s fingers, caressed them, “Such long fingers,” he mused, closing them in his fist and stroking them. The act was undeniably phallic.

“I’ve been good, surely,” Howard said. 

Vince laughed, “It don’t count as patience if you’re bothering me the whole while, you realize that, right?” 

“I’m not bothering you, merely reminding you.” 

“Hush yourself,” Vince said. “I ain’t done. And the more you talk, the longer you’ll have to wait.” 

“You’re being quite high-handed, you know.” 

“Yeah, well, I ain’t used to being the one with the self-control. Not sure how to do it proper. Now, hush, and stand there. No more _reminding_. That’s a good lad,” Vince said, pressing a kiss into each of Howard’s palms before releasing his hands. 

He untucked Howard’s shirt, slipped each of the buttons free, so that it gaped open to Howard’s stomach. Vince stepped back and appraised him with a grin, “Now you look proper rakish. A regular Heathcliff, even.” He nodded toward the bed, “Go sit down and wait, and we’ll see what that might get you.” 

Howard complied and sat on the edge of Vince’s bed, which was as plush as Howard’s own mattress was firm. In the dark, it was difficult to discern what Vince was doing, but he’d gone to the other side of the room, near the window. Howard heard him open a drawer and have a rifle inside before he closed it again. 

He set something down on the nightstand next to the bed. He struck a match and lit a candle, the gentle flame revealed a bright patch of red wall and glowed around the edges of Vince’s face. He shook out the match, then stood in front of Howard.

“Didn’t move, now, did you?” he asked, looking Howard over. He smiled, clearly pleased that Howard had not. “That’s a good boy.” He leaned forward and placed a kiss on Howard’s neck, then another, this one with the edge of his teeth in it. Howard moaned and Vince withdrew, his fingers tracing over the place where his mouth had been.

He stepped back, perhaps two feet from where Howard sat. His hands wove among the pale folds of his ascot as he untied it. 

Howard sat forward on the bed. 

Perhaps noticing his eagerness, Vince slowed. If the display hadn’t been so wholly fascinating, Howard would have resented this change of pace, but it was fascinating; the revelation of Vince’s collar, which he discarded, the slow appearance of his throat, which bobbed, as he swallowed. 

As he had done Howard, he undressed himself. 

Buttons, buttons, so many damned buttons, and he took an age over each one. It was almost perverse, the way he pinched each between his fingers, the way he plucked and then gently pushed each button through its hole, carried them to the limit the garment would allow before he’d start on the next. He was so deliberate, so completely absorbed in his task, that it seemed incredible that his eyes never left Howard’s face.

Vince undid his braces and let them fall. He pulled the hem of his shirt out of his trousers and up over his head, revealing so much pale skin, that Howard thought he might drown in that creamy expanse. To be perfectly correct, he _wanted_ to drown in that creamy expanse. 

Howard licked his lips. He looked up at Vince, shifted further forward and spread his thighs so that Vince was stood in the center of a V of invitation. 

Vince smirked, “Think that you might be reminding me again, Howard.” His hands idly stroked his own skin, pausing at the waistband of his very much tented trousers.

Christ. 

“I assure you I’m not,” Howard said in a reasonable facsimile of calm. “Merely needed to adjust my position. To make myself more comfortable.” 

“That right?” 

“Oh yes. Absolutely.” 

Vince stepped between Howard’s knees, for once, the taller of them. He caressed the side of Howard’s face and he stroked down to his jaw. “You’re sure this is how you want it?” he asked. 

“Completely.” Indeed, Howard had never wanted it any other way. He’d always liked men of action, men who were rough, strong, dominant. Men who might have forced him to take the role, so that Howard wouldn’t have to actually say what he wanted. 

Vince, evidently, was not about to force him into it, and Howard, again, without thinking overmuch about _why_ this suddenly was, was unashamed to clarify that it was indeed his choice, his preference, to have it just so. 

“You’ll tell me if,” Vince followed the line of Howard’s jaw to his chin, “if it goes wrong?” 

“It won’t.” 

Vince huffed a laugh, “Yeah, but if it _does_ , you promise you’ll say? You know that I’ll stop? There’s... a lot else that we could do. And we don’t have to do nothing, if you change your mind.” 

Howard was slightly amused by the concern in Vince’s voice, the thought that he could force Howard into anything striking him as faintly ridiculous, but Vince was completely in earnest. He looked at Howard as though worried he might break him. “Are you sure _you_ want to?” Howard asked. “I’d not considered that you might not.” 

Vince laughed again, “I want to. Very much. But I... I never want to hurt you, see? And this ain’t the easiest thing. Even when you think you want it, it can go bad. And I never done someone the first time.” He traced the shell of Howard’s ear with his fingertips, then pulled away. “I want to do it right for you.” 

Vince’s hand hovered beside Howard’s face. Howard took it and pressed a kiss into its stuttering heart. 

“I trust you,” Howard said. “If I want you to, I know you’ll stop, and I promise I’ll tell you if I want you to stop.” 

Vince’s trembling stilled. “Alright.” He moved forward until his knees were against the edge of the bed, until his hips were surrounded on either side by Howard’s thighs. He bent down over Howard and kissed him. 

Every time they kissed was different. This kiss was warm sunlight on a spring day, a kiss that awakened that which slumbered, called to life that which was dormant. It was warmth and heat, but not an inferno. It was tender rather than consuming.

Vince bore Howard back onto the bed, his light body settling atop him. 

Finally being able to touch Vince’s bare skin was a revelation. It was so soft, the skin of his back and shoulders, it was like kidskin, smooth almost to the point of velvet. His body was warm and Howard could feel every move he made, could feel each shift of muscle as he moved his hands on Howard’s body, as he tangled his hand into Howard’s hair, as he slid it under Howard’s shirt and felt his way up Howard’s torso. 

He found Howard’s nipple under his shirt and traced over it. Howard gasped and arched his hips up off the bed. 

“Still good?” Vince asked, withdrawing his touch. 

“Yes, very good.” 

Vince smiled and then kissed Howard again, and gently fondled his nipple. Howard moaned. He had perched one of his hands at the small of Vince’s back and the other between his shoulder blades, but now it seemed insufficient to touch him merely there. 

He dropped one hand down to Vince arse, slid the other up the back of his neck. His fingertips found the edge of Vince’s still bound hair. “Your hair,” Howard gasped. “May I...?” 

“You like it?” Vince asked with a smile in his voice. 

“It’s all I’ve wanted to... _Almost_ all I’ve wanted to touch since the moment I saw you.” 

“Have at it,” Vince said. 

Howard found the ends of the ribbon and pulled it loose. Vince had shifted the ponytail he wore to one side of his neck, but as soon as his hair was unbound, a quantity of it shifted to the other side like water falling over rocks. Howard carded his fingers through it from the nape of Vince’s neck to the crown of his head and back down. 

Silk, velvet, satin, gossamer; none of them were soft enough, fine enough, extravagant enough for Howard to liken to the feel of that hair. 

Vince was looking down at him, his eyes half-lidded, his lips parted slightly. There were no words for him. He was a painting, a statue, a creature that wanted illumination and demanded admiration, but no man could have sculpted or painted anything half so beautiful, by accident or on purpose; and he was in Howard’s arms, tolerating Howard’s touch, _enjoying_ Howard’s touch. It scarcely seemed possible. 

“Christ, you’re beautiful,” Howard said, overcome. “You’re gorgeous. You’re—” 

Vince silenced him with a kiss. He had shifted himself completely between Howard’s thighs, his cock nestled tightly next to Howard’s. 

Howard’s insistence was growing again. He wanted to pull Vince tight to him, to encourage him to move things on, but he was reluctant of the same. There was a hesitancy in all Vince was doing that Howard did not want to press. 

Instead, he tangled both of his hands in Vince’s hair, coiled it around his fingers, pushed it away from his face, and stroked it from root to end, feeling the whole while as though he were being permitted to touch a forbidden treasure. 

Vince pulled away slightly, closed his eyes and leaned his face into Howard’s touch so that the strange shape of his nose was outlined against Howard’s palm. “Beautiful, beautiful,” Howard repeated, stroking down the side of his face, “you’re so beautiful.” 

Vince turned just as Howard completed tracing the course of Vince’s cheekbone to the edge of his lips and kissed Howard’s open hand, “I had no idea,” he said, breathlessly, “no idea at all, you’d be like this. Christ, Howard.” He leaned back on his knees. 

Howard’s hands slid down his arms and held him as Vince began unbuttoning Howard’s trousers. Vince shoved the tweed down and off Howard’s hips, then his drawers, so that Howard’s prick was free at last. 

“Fuck,” Vince said, “ _Look_ at you.” Howard wasn’t entirely sure _what_ there was to look at, but Vince had evidently found something; he was staring at Howard with his bottom lip caught between his teeth. Vince’s fingers made a first, gentle contact with Howard’s prick. The sensation of Vince’s hand stroking him _there_ was almost too much to bear. 

Howard held Vince’s arms more tightly as Vince swirled his thumb over the head of his cock, collecting the bead of semen that had formed and brushing it down Howard’s shaft. His other hand was holding Howard at his hip, and he dipped it into the valley of Howard’s thighs, cupped Howard’s balls. 

“ _Vince_ ,” Howard groaned forcefully. 

Vince shifted himself backward and started kissing the underside of Howard’s cock. Howard moaned again, the dim sight of the tiny close-lipped kisses twice as arousing as the feel of them, and then Vince’s tongue licked a single line up from the base of Howard’s prick. Vince had only just got the head past his lips when the sensation, the sight, proved too much. 

“I’m going to,” Howard gasped, and Vince took him all the way down. He screwed his eyes shut and cried out, pleasure radiating from the base of his spine like heat-lightning at the end of an August afternoon, until he was left with nothing but the dull pounding of his pulse in his ears. 

Howard laid still and insensible for a moment, sluggishly limping to catch up with reality. When he at last managed to open his eyes, he saw Vince looking down at him with a smile like the devil’s. 

“Good?” he asked. 

“Jesus, yes. I suppose that, because you’re a performer, you like to have reviews.” 

Vince laughed, “Something like that, yeah.” He rubbed Howard’s thighs, from his knees to his hips and back down. 

Even that gentle contact was enough to make Howard shiver. He’d never thought of himself as a wanton man, but he had not had experience of anything like what had just been done to him. If it had been merely his own hand and desperation that had driven him to completion, he’d have cleaned himself up, turned over, and gone to sleep, but it wasn’t. It was Vince who had done it, Vince who was still half-dressed and so absurdly gorgeous. 

Howard, who had been used to deferring pleasure for months at a time, now wanted to seek it again. Immediately.

He looked down at Vince’s standing prick, still locked away behind the front of his trousers and sat up, keeping Vince well within the confines of his thighs, “You haven’t… found your satisfaction.” 

Vince laughed, “No, I haven’t.” 

Howard kissed him and placed his hands on Vince’s hips. He followed the narrow bones around his front to the waistband of his trousers. Their eyes met and Howard looked for the uncertainty, the hesitation of earlier; but he did not see it there. Now there was only desire. 

Howard slipped the top button free, then followed the line of buttons down, his fingers brushing against Vince’s prick, “Please do,” he said. Vince nodded and kissed him and Howard found his efforts to undress him hampered by Vince’s mouth and hands; the one sucked at Howard’s throat, the others slid through his hair and down his chest and around his back. 

When Howard had at last undone the final button, he wrapped his arms around Vince and pulled him down over him. He shoved Vince’s trousers off his hips. His hands got momentarily tangled in Vince’s drawers until Vince undid the laces at the front of them, and then Howard was able to shove everything off him. 

He felt his way up the outside of Vince’s thighs, played each bony key of his ribs, as he continued up the whole sinuous line of Vince’s body. There was so much of him to touch, so much of him, every inch utterly perfect. 

Vince shifted. He pulled away from Howard, kissed down his body, as he went back on his knees again and reached toward his nightstand, his fingers groping before he seized the little pot he had put atop it. 

“Shift over, onto your stomach,” Vince said. “It’ll go a bit easier.” 

Howard rolled over onto his stomach and felt Vince resettle between his legs. Vince laid his hands on either side of the base of Howard’s spinal column. With a gentle pressure, he slid his hands up Howard’s back, then back down, gently massaging Howard’s back.

This, too, was new to Howard. Someone touching him like that. With no purpose but to soothe him, or please him. He looked over his shoulder and saw Vince leaning over him. Vince caught his eye and dropped a kiss between Howard’s shoulder blades.

Howard felt his cock twitch underneath him.

Vince’s hands cupped his bottom, gave him a squeeze. His lips fell on the small of Howard’s back and another shiver chased its way up his spine. 

“You’re beautiful too,” Vince said softly. “I didn’t say before, but you are.”

Howard laughed, “Am I? I’ve had no reason to suspect it.”

“Well, there you are. Cat’s out of the bag now,” Vince confirmed. His fingers now pressed more firmly into Howard’s back. He knelt up and massaged over Howard’s shoulders, placed a kiss at the base of his neck, “This is alright?”

“Yes,” Howard said, melting into Vince’s touch. “Is this... how it’s done?”

He could hear the smirk in Vince’s voice as he said, “Bumming? Not always. Not usually. Helps, though, if you’re relaxed.”

“Ah,” Howard said. Vince’s hands dipped lower and Howard shifted his hips to accommodate his tightening prick. 

“How are you feeling?”

“Good. Nice.” 

“Anything else?” 

“Hard. I’m getting hard again.” 

Vince’s placed another kiss at the base of Howard’s spine, “I’m going to move things along a little, then, yeah?” 

“Please, yes.” 

Vince dragged a knuckle down Howard’s crease, lightened his touch when Howard jumped at the contact, slowed down. “Alright?” 

“Yes. It’s just strange, someone else doing that.” 

“Someone else?” Vince asked, the pressure of his knuckle increasing again. 

“Oh... yes. I’ve, well, I’ve tried it before. Myself.” 

“With what?” Vince asked, swallowing audibly. 

“Just... my fingers.” 

Vince laughed, “Howard, that’s filthy.” 

Howard felt himself flush hot, but not from embarrassment. His new boldness led him to wish to convey some additional information. “I did it... in my room once. I was thinking about you.” 

“Did you?” Vince asked, in the tones of one trying very hard to be casual. His hands left off and Howard heard the unscrewing of a cap. When he next touched him, his fingers were slickened. He started teasing at his hole, “When?” 

“After... after we went out, that night when we heard those men below stairs. I couldn’t get you out of my mind. I couldn’t,” Vince pressed into him a little, “I couldn’t sleep without doing—” Howard gasped as Vince pressed deeper, “—something to alleviate... Oh, fuck me.” 

Vince stopped, “Alright?” 

“Yes, yes. Don’t stop. You’re nearly—” Vince probed deeper, and he was _there_ , “Oh, _Christ_ ,” Howard wailed, grinding his hips down into the mattress.

There was a hesitation before Vince said, “Keep telling me about how you touched yourself.” 

Howard laughed, “How am I supposed to—” again Vince hooked his finger and words left Howard. “I don’t think I can if you’re... _hell_.” 

“Try.” 

“I wanted you to... _this_. I thought about... your hands. About... fuck, you’re so beautiful. Your hair... your eyes... the way you smile when... when you’re... happy.” He felt an increase in pressure, an additional stretch, then Vince was pressing into him again. “Your face when you _tease me_. When... after the satsumas, when we ran, and you were breathing hard, and you were... flushed up like...” Howard muffled a groan against the pillow as Vince found that place inside him again. 

“I thought about that too,” Vince said, his voice dark. “You in that alley, leaning back against those dirty bricks, catching your breath. I wanted to kiss you.” 

Howard thrust into the mattress, the friction positively heavenly. His prick felt so hard and full, so near to bursting _again_ that he couldn’t stop himself from repeating the action. Vince’s fingers shifted inside him, and Howard pushed back on his hand and edged him where he wanted. 

“Kiss me now,” Howard pleaded. 

Vince withdrew from him and Howard shifted onto his side so that their mouths made sloppy contact. Howard’s hands closed on Vince’s hips and he pulled him along with him as he rolled onto his back. He groped around the bed linen for the little pot, found it, collected a daub of whatever slick jelly was inside and then found Vince’s prick where it was pressed into his belly. He wrapped his hand around it. 

The thrill of touching, he found, was akin to the thrill of being touched. Howard slid up and down Vince’s length experimentally, then encouraged Vince deeper into the valley of his thighs so that their pricks were lined up with one another.

Vince hissed against his lips.

“I want—” 

Vince silenced him with his mouth, “I know, I know, I want it too, just...” he groaned as Howard moved against him. Vince’s hips rolled, and Howard moved to meet them, “Fuck, Howard,” he said, voice breaking. Vince pushed himself up.

“Vince—” 

“We’re almost there.” 

Howard missed the heat of Vince’s body over him intensely, “Touch me, keep touching me.”

“That’s a bloody change of tune,” Vince said with half a laugh. He didn’t stop touching him. 

While one hand resumed the business of preparing him, the other traveled restlessly over Howard’s skin, from his hip, to his chest, down to his stomach, “We’re almost there,” he repeated, dropping down to kiss Howard’s thighs. 

Howard felt another increase of pressure and he moaned again, “When?” he asked. 

“Soon.” 

Vince stroked evenly inside Howard’s body, then then started spreading his fingers, the stretch, the pressure increasing again, then easing, then increasing. He placed kiss after kiss on Howard’s skin, sometimes with tongue, sometimes with teeth, sometimes only with his lips, always carefully avoiding his cock, but putting his mouth just about everywhere else. 

Howard felt sweat blossoming on his skin, his whole body hot, his cock aching.

“How are you feeling?” Vince asked, his voice thick. 

“Like I want you inside me.” 

Howard felt a tremor shake its way through Vince. He withdrew his fingers. He crawled up Howard’s body and kissed Howard fiercely. He slid back, kissing down Howard’s throat and collarbone. He pushed himself up on his hands and looked down. 

Howard watched him and, for once, Vince didn’t catch him. He was too intent on his own task to notice Howard drinking in the sight of him, with his hair wild and free, flowing down his shoulders, his thin chest rising and following rapidly, his prick standing at absolute attention. 

Vince braced himself on one hand, took his prick in the other and guided himself toward Howard’s entrance. He pressed into him with a groan. “Oh, Christ,” he said, shutting his eyes. “Don’t move, Howard. Just... wait.” 

The feel of him was nothing more than a tease. Howard wanted, needed more. “I’ve _been_ waiting.” 

“I know, just,” Vince swallowed, “a little more.” 

The hand that he had on his own cock now clasped Howard’s. He stroked Howard lightly, not moving his hips or burying himself any further within him. 

“Vince, _please_.” 

Vince stroked him more firmly, “Tell me when you’re just there.” 

“Fuck me and I will be.” 

“Howard,” Vince groaned again. He pressed into him, but _not enough_. 

Howard’s patience had reached its limit. He grabbed Vince’s arse and pulled him deeper, and Vince’s instinct overtook over his self-control. He cried out as he finally slid himself home. He changed his angle, aimed himself short and sharp, until he found his mark. 

“Yes,” Howard said, “Vince, yes, there, there, _there_ , fuck,” he gasped, “me.” 

Vince wailed, his thrusts losing rhythm, “Touch yourself,” he panted, “come with me.”

Howard did as he was asked. He was being torn at every seam, being burnt from the inside out and the outside in. This, this, this, always, forever, this; Vince above him, his eyes shut, his rapturous expression only for Howard to see. It felt like thunder, like a torrent, like a thousand, beautiful pattering notes coalescing until, at last, there were too many to maintain and the whole thing burst ecstatically apart. 

Howard threw his head back against the mattress and Vince drove into him a final time. “Howard,” he groaned, and then he collapsed over him.

They laid like that, Vince atop him, Howard panting beneath him, in shock or awe, or perhaps a healthy mix of both, for an indeterminable amount of time.

At last, Vince broke the silence, “I think... I think I may have lost me eyesight.” 

“I don’t seem to have any of my bones left,” Howard said. 

Vince chuckled. He tucked his elbows under himself, shifted as though he were going to roll off him, but Howard wasn’t having that _yet_. He wrapped his arm around Vince’s back and Vince stilled. “It were— it was alright? You’re alright?” 

Howard raised his legs on either side of Vince’s skinny hips, then placed a kiss on the crown of his head. “I’m perfect. You were perfect.” 

“Yeah?” 

“Yes,” Howard said. “Though, I think we may have ruined your counterpane.” 

“S’alright. I’ve got another. And it’s not like we’ll be sleeping on top of...” he stopped abruptly, tensing again in Howard’s arms, “I mean, if you want, that is, to... to sleep in here. You don’t have to.” 

Puzzled, Howard stroked his soft skin, “Yes, I’d like that. Why shouldn’t I want to?” 

“Some people don’t want to, after, is all.” 

Something slowly slid into place in Howard’s mind. Someone, he realized, had once treated Vince very poorly indeed. Perhaps, he reflected, more than one person had. 

That was never going to happen again. He hugged him more tightly. “Well, I want to. I want to stay with you. I want to hold you tonight.” He caressed the back of Vince’s head, rubbed his scalp, “I want to wake up with you tomorrow, and…” he hesitated, “You should know this isn’t... this isn’t fleeting. For me.” 

“You say that,” Vince said, not quite making it into a joke, landing instead on something like incredulity. 

“I mean it,” Howard told him. “I’ll prove it to you.” 

Vince leaned up so that he could look at him, “Will you?” 

Howard could just see Vince’s expression in the dim. Never had he seen him look so innocent, so shy. His eyes shone with something like hope, something that Howard wanted to protect until the end of his days.

He brushed Vince’s hair off his cheek, “Yes.”


	15. Morning

Howard opened his eyes and was immediately struck with the impression that he’d wandered into some sort of fairy land. He had not noticed anything of the room he was in the night before (his attention had been far too focused in another direction), but in the pale light of morning, and with no distractions, the true glory of Vince's bedchamber was revealed to him. Above him, bright pink fabric flowed away toward each post of the bed. The walls were red, or, rather, would have been red if the bulk of them hadn’t been covered in... well, all sorts of things.

Howard lifted his head off the pillow it rested on and stared. A kaleidoscope of bright flowers wove through knotted and bowing trees, garishly colored birds flit through their boughs, and strange, partially-clothed animals wandered through the underbrush of a fantastical jungle. There were insects, too, painted with such a sense of movement that Howard was almost surprised that they were paint only, even though their shapes seemed completely imaginary. And sky fish. There were fish, just floating in the sky.

Howard laughed in wonder. It was staggering, blinding, completely glorious. He could have lost an entire day looking at it, a score of days, and he still would not have seen everything there was to see.

He very well might have lost himself in the art if not for the living work of art that still slept next to him.

Vince was nestled against Howard’s side, the undoubted lord of this strange fairy kingdom. Howard kissed the top of his head and gently brushed the hair away from his cheek so that he could see more of his sleeping face. He followed the length of Vince’s tresses to their completion and then started again, near his temple, through the gentle resistance that met his fingers and down to the ends.

Vince stirred slightly as Howard was making his third pass through his hair and burrowed himself impossibly closer to him, “Don’t stop,” he said sleepily.

Howard assured him that he had no intention of doing so and continued petting him, rubbing his fingertips against Vince’s scalp, massaging gently down his neck, and then his shoulder and arm, at last taking his hand and rubbing the pads at the base of his fingers and the meaty swell under his thumb. Vince purred and hummed, snuggled closer to Howard, every sound and motion going to Howard’s head like liquor. 

Vince picked himself up and then draped himself over Howard and kissed him, the pair of them secluded in the cave that his long hair formed around them.

He kissed around Howard’s throat and down his chest, across his stomach and still down until he took Howard in his mouth and brought him to completion, which favor Howard then returned.

When they were done, Vince snuggled back into Howard’s side and pulled the covers over their shoulders. “I don’t want to get out of bed today,” he said sleepily. 

Howard stroked down his back, “We haven’t got rehearsal until twelve. I wager we’ve got a few hours yet before we have to consider that unpleasantness.”

“ _We_ have rehearsal,” Vince said, smiling. “I didn’t tell you yesterday, but I’m so happy that you’re going to be... well, that you got it. You were amazing. The whole of London is going to want to come hear you play.”

Howard made no effort to demur. He knew that it was so. He’d always known that he was good, but yesterday, for the first time, he’d proven it. It felt beyond incredible.

The music hall would be a necessary detour, but his goal was within reach. The Symphony, virtuoso performances, the lot. At last, Howard Moon would show them all what he was really made of. He, finally, could prove that he had a calling, just as he’d always thought he did.

He smiled.

Vince looked up at him, “You seem happy.”

“I am happy,” Howard said. “I feel as though, for the first time in my life, I have everything that I want.”

Vince’s hand circled around Howard’s stomach, “Yeah?”

“Yes.”

“Good,” Vince said, putting his head back down on Howard’s chest. 

Vince was evidently of a mind to fall asleep again, but Howard was wakeful. He looked around him, at the chair that had collected most of their apparel the night before, at the wardrobe that stood with a door open and a yellow dress hanging over it, at the window that overlooked the street, near which was the small cabinet that Vince must have rummaged through last night. To his left, was a massive dressing table with an equally massive mirror behind it, a veritable city of bottles, brushes and ribbons set out atop it. 

The same fanciful animals had been painted around every piece of furniture, peeking out shyly, or mischievously, or menacingly. They were wonderful.

“Who did this?” Howard asked, looking directly at a rather soulful gorilla in a toga.

Vince startled slightly, “What’s that?”

“Your walls. All the painting. It’s...”

Vince sighed, “Go ahead. It’s strange. Too bright. Gauche. Whatever you want to say. I’ve heard it all before.”

“That’s not... I was going to say it’s beautiful. I like it.”

“You do?”

“Yeah. Very fanciful. I feel like I’ve woken up in the middle of a jungle.”

“And you like that?”

“It’s better than waking up in a cold, white-walled box like I usually do.”

“Yeah, alright.” 

Howard could hear the eyeroll in Vince’s voice. “I like it,” he insisted. “They look very lively. The animals, the insects, everything.”

“They don’t look _real_ ,” Vince said. 

“They’re whimsical.” 

Vince snorted, “As if you want anything to do with whimsy.” 

Howard fixed him with a look, “I can appreciate whimsy, sir. Some say I’m very whimsical myself, in fact.”

“No one has ever said that of you. I’d bet my life.”

“They might not have spoken it aloud, Vince, but people have thought it. ‘Look at that gentleman, what’s he thinking of with that quixotic lilt in his gait, head in the clouds, gathering wool like a like wire brush.’ I could run a textile mill with all the whimsical wool I’ve gathered. Make blankets of whimsy so thick, you’d never see daylight from under them.”

Vince huffed against Howard’s skin, “Arse,” he kissed the spot his breath was dusting.

“So?” Howard said, jogging him with his shoulder. “Who did it?”

Vince sighed. “I did.”

“ _You_ did?”

“Yeah! Don’t need to sound so surprised.”

“Sorry, it’s just... It seems that it must have taken you years.”

“Not so long as all that. Little over six months when I was at it.”

“Amazing,” Howard said, looking around him again. “And the dress? On the wardrobe?”

Vince looked toward it, “Oh, that’s a costume for the music hall.”

“What are you doing with it?”

“Sewed it, didn’t I?”

“You sewed it?”

“Yes, daftie,” Vince said, laughing. “Have to be useful somehow, don’t I?”

“Useful? Is it usual in music hall for one of the performers to sew costumes?”

“Sometimes.”

“Any other _useful_ habits you’ve acquired over the years?” Howard asked teasingly.

“Yeah. I paint scenery and do the lights. _And_ handle it when the dogs start looking for a pay rise or yapping about getting up a union. Whatever Fossil needs. Anyway, who’d you think was making my clothes? Ain’t a tailor in London that will sew violet silk into a proper suit. Everything I wear I make myself. Excepting the boots.”

Impressed as Howard was by all of this information, he was also puzzled, “And you do all this in addition to performing? Seems rather a lot.”

“Oh, yeah. It is.” Vince said quickly. “It’s just... well, I mean, I do, obviously, perform, yeah? But...” His hand stilled on Howard’s stomach. “I just... haven’t found the right act, exactly, so, I’m kind of a fill in sometimes. Not really properly my own thing, yet.”

Howard mulled this over, astonished to learn that people weren’t queueing up to see Vince do _something_. Plus, he’d always rather understood from Vince himself that he was… well, _a music hall star_. It didn’t matter. Of course it didn’t, but Howard was puzzled.

Vince fidgeted beside him, “Howard, I... hope that you’re not... disappointed.”

“Why would I be? I’m surprised, if anything. When we went out, it seemed like the whole of Shoreditch knew you. I assumed, I suppose, that you had rather a following.”

“Oh,” Vince said. He sighed, “Well, I don’t. People just know me. I cut a bit of a figure, I guess.”

Howard laughed, “That’s an understatement.”

Vince smiled, but the expression faded. His fingers resumed tracing across Howard’s stomach. “Anyway, I’m not like you, am I?” he said. “Talented, or anything.”

“That’s not... true.”

“Thanks a lot.”

“I didn’t mean—” Howard said quickly, “It’s just, you know, you are talented, I’m sure… No, I’ll have that back. What I mean to say is, even though I might have heard finer singers in my time,” he swallowed, aware that he was going from bad to worse. He plucked those words out of the air as well, “I’ve never... _seen_ anyone like you.”

“So, I should stand up on stage and charge to let people look at me, then? Like a freakshow?”

Howard winced, “No, that’s not what I mean either. I’m trying to say, I suppose, that you’re bound to find something eventually. You could maybe try those… patter songs. Like they do. Or have you considered bubble magic?”

“What are you on about?”

“Bubbles. I saw a man once who blew them with a wand and he’d stick them together in a chain. Called it a caterpillar. He blew smoke into some of them so that they were opaque. Ever seen an opaque bubble before, Vince? It’s quite a sight to behold.”

“Sounds awful.”

“It’s not great,” Howard conceded. “Well, what about like a double act sort of thing?”

“Those don’t tend to work out for me,” Vince said softly. “Nothing tends to work out in the end.”

Howard was a little surprised by the shift in Vince’s mood. He had never known him to be glum. About anything. He wasn’t quite sure how to handle it. “I’m sorry,” he hazarded.

“Nothing you can do about it. It’s just the way it is. I just, people just... I don’t know,” Vince shook his head. He looked up at Howard, “Fuck, I’m sorry. Got a case of the morbs this morning and I shouldn’t.”

“Is something particular on your mind? I hope it hasn’t got anything to do with... last night.”

“It hasn’t,” Vince said, “of course it doesn’t.” He kissed Howard and then gave him a smile, “I’m very happy about all that. Just a bit tired, I think. And, I’m hungry too.”

Howard wasn’t completely convinced that Vince was only suffering from a lack of sleep and food. Probably, Howard had mucked everything up with his inability to say what he actually meant. Or perhaps, it was something deeper. It occurred to him that, even for their entire year and more of acquaintance, Howard knew shockingly little about the man he’d just bedded. He should have known more. He wanted to know more. He wanted to know everything.

Howard looked down at him. The light had strengthened to the extent that he could see Vince easily now. He did look tired. To be perfectly honest, they hadn’t exactly slept without interruption. Howard was a little tired himself and if Vince wanted to pretend that all he needed was some sleep and a bit of food, Howard would let him. “Well, why don’t you have a lie in and I’ll go downstairs and get us some dog-fur porridge.”

Vince made a face, but he laughed, “Yeah, I suppose that it’s better than nothing.”

Howard kissed his forehead, “When I come upstairs, maybe you could tell me more about, well, this, for a start,” Howard said looking at the walls. “About how you came up with it?” 

“Sure,” Vince said, stifling a yawn. He burrowed himself against Howard’s shoulder. “It’s just the jungle, though. Not that much to tell.”

“I’m sure there is,” Howard said, because he didn’t understand how any jungle could be _just_ a jungle, even if it was an imaginary one, but Vince made no answer. He’d already fallen asleep.

Howard carefully shifted himself out from under him, then tucked the counterpane around his thin shoulders. He pulled on his trousers and shirt, made himself just neat enough to be respectable, and then went downstairs in search of breakfast.

Immediately apparent in the downstairs hall was a scent like scorched hair. Howard assumed that this meant that the morning porridge had been burnt and thought about perhaps setting off in search of something better to eat now that he had sufficient funds to do so, but decided to at least check and be _sure_ that the porridge was ruined before he gave up hope of returning to bed as quickly as possible.

The nearer he got to the dining room, the worse the scent was, and it was mixed with something else, something very like _wet dog_ , something, too, akin to that swampy scent that so frequently accompanied Mr. Naboo’s rituals. 

Howard turned into the dining room, fully convinced that he would be turning around a moment later, half-wondering where the closest costermonger’s stand was, half-wondering if he could find scones at the bakery down the street, and not at all looking for anything unusual.

He apprehended the sideboard, but where the pot of miserable, burnt porridge should have been there was nothing. The dining table was unlaid.

He had just enough time to begin to wonder why, when in the periphery of his vision loomed an enormous black shape toward which he turned. At the same moment Mr. Naboo said, “Get him, Bollo,” and then Howard found himself being seized by _a fucking gorilla_.

“Jesus Christ!” Howard shrieked, his were arms strapped to his side by a strong (very furry) grip. Blue eyes it had. Surely, gorillas were not meant to have _blue eyes_.

“Sit him down,” Mr. Naboo commanded.

Howard was forced toward a dining chair, instinct insisting he resist, even though it was like trying to stop a speeding coal wagon with a hedge. 

“Have you got him?” asked a man, stepping from behind... _somewhere_. Narrow, hat, feathers, cape. That was all Howard could manage before his eyes were drawn elsewhere.

Strapped in front of him, in something like a papoose, was a pink little fetish of some kind that... blinked, sneered, and then ( _waiving its tentacles frantically_ ) said, “Aw, yeah! Let the torturing commence!”

Howard fainted dead away.


	16. The Shaman Council

“You never _lead_ with the torture, Tony. Everyone knows, you _never_ lead with the torture.”

“I was in the moment, it felt right! Look at ‘im! Didn’t think he’d be a shrinking violet!”

“I told you he was delicate,” lisped a voice. “You should have kept hidden and let me handle it.”

“M’not... delicate...” Howard slurred.

“He’s coming round.”

Howard heard himself groan. He saw through eyes that seemed covered with waxpaper. All around him were swathes of color. Large gobs of brownish orange, a daub of purple, a haze of blue, a spiky mass of black, a tiny punch of bright pink... slowly, he understood them. Walls, furniture; the dining room. The smaller bits of color courteously resolved themselves into things there were more or less people. Mr. Naboo in front of him, the gorilla slightly to Howard’s left, the narrow man he’d seen before and...

“That gentleman there is just a head,” Howard said, staring straight at the pink, testicle-skulled, betentacled _shape_ that was sitting on the edge of the dining table, _leering_ like— he felt himself starting to swoon again.

He was slapped. He jolted awake. 

Mr. Naboo was looking down at him with a very definite aura of menace. Howard looked around the room again, at the assembly before him, and decided that this was not a place he wanted to be. He tried to stand, could not, and panicked. 

He shouted and kicked at the ground, the chair he was sitting in skidded, caught on something and then tipped backward. Too late, he noticed his wrists were tied to the arms of the chair, too late, he saw the thick length of rope coiled around his waist. Wherever the chair was going, Howard would go too. 

He full well expected to fall and crack his head open, but instead, found himself looking at the underside of the gorilla’s chin. Black hands closed on Howard’s shoulders and tipped the chair back to level so that Howard locked eyes with the pink _thing_ again.

“No!” Howard wailed, “Don’t kill me, I’ve got so much to give!” 

“We ain’t going to kill you,” said the head. His voice was incredibly familiar.

“Yet,” added the tall, narrow man.

And then it slammed into place, “You were in Mr. Naboo’s study!” Howard said. Looks were traded around the room, but Howard didn’t notice them. He was too busy coming to grips with the horror of the situation before him.

Mr. Saboo... Tony Harrison... Sweet Jesus, the hexagonal penis was _real_.

His face felt like it was going to crack, he had all the muscles in it drawn so tight. 

They were going to kill him. Not _yet_ , but didn’t that imply eventually? They were going to kill him, and— Howard couldn’t have got through a complete thought with assistance from a ton of dynamite, which was probably why he abruptly blurted, “Where’s Vince!?”

Mr. Naboo had been watching him. At Howard’s words he considered him afresh. It was with heavy meaning that he lisped, “Vince?”

Howard flushed. “Mr. Noir, that is.” 

Mr. Naboo’s eyebrow raised a hair in a way that seemed to imply he correctly understood the reason for Howard’s slip. He shook his head slightly, “Humans.”

Mr. Naboo said _humans_ in rather the same way a person might say _dogs_ or _rats_ , or some other lesser genus to which they did not belong, dismissing it with a sort of _what can you expect?_ verbal shrug. Why the fuck, Howard wondered, did it sound like _human_ wasn’t what Mr. Naboo was?

“What have you done with him?” Howard asked as menacingly as he could, given, of course, that he was tied to a chair, squaring up against at least one literal monster, a gorilla, and a pair of warlocks.

“Nothing,” Mr. Naboo said. Howard continued to glare at him, and he rolled his eyes, “I put him to sleep, ballbag.” 

“You cast a spell on him?” Howard asked, aghast. He fought against his bonds, no longer caring what might happen to himself and wanting only to get to Vince, to save him from whatever these... _people_ might do to him. “That’s... that’s wrong!”

Mr. Naboo scoffed at him. “You’d know all about _wrong_ , wouldn’t you? Keep him still, Bollo.” 

Bollo. The gorilla was Bollo.

Then, a lot of things started adding up. The food, always tainted with black hair, the kitchen that Howard was not supposed to enter, the kitchen that Vince _had_ entered; Vince had known the whole time, had even painted Bollo onto his wall, and he’d never told him that they were living with an actual _gorilla_. 

Was it possible that he was in league with these maniacs? But, no, Howard thought. Mr. Naboo had magicked him asleep. Surely, there would be no need to do that if Vince would have approved of what was happening. No wonder he’d been tired! He’d essentially been _drugged_.

And, as angry as that made him, Howard had more pressing concerns.

Mr. Naboo was rifling through a certain quantity of kit that had been brought into the dining room. Torture implements, Howard assumed. _You’d know all about wrong._ What the hell was that supposed to mean? 

“Please,” Howard said, “I don’t understand what’s going on.”

“Don’t you,” Mr. Naboo said flatly. He turned toward Howard with a hand mirror and a vial of what looked like blood. He set the mirror down on the dining table, then uncapped the blood and dipped his finger in it. He drew something on the silvered surface. “It’s come to my attention that you’ve been trucking with the occult.”

“I’m sure... that, I haven’t... _trucked_ with it. More like a bit of a... not even a dabble, exactly. I don’t, that is, do that. Dabble. Truck. Those sorts of things. With the occult.”

Mr. Naboo gave him an uninterpretable look. Of course it was. The man was a fucking sphinx. “Except that you do.”

“Not as a matter of habit.”

“But you have meddled.”

“I don’t know about meddled...”

Mr. Saboo snorted, “So, you’re saying that you haven’t been conspiring to free your master from the prison he’s been locked in for over two-hundred years, that you didn’t traffic highly illegal magic items, that you haven’t involved multiple innocent humans in dark rituals, and that you haven’t offered yourself up to He Who Hitches, Baboo Yagu, otherwise known as The Peppermint Nightmare, as a vessel for his evil old soul?”

“What?” Howard looked desperately at Mr. Naboo, thoroughly bewildered. “I... Howard Moon is not the sort of man who _offers himself up_ to other men!”

“That’s not what I’ve heard,” said Mr. Saboo.

“Walked right into it, you slag!” Tony Harrison crowed. Howard had been doing quite a good job of ignoring him, but he looked at him again and felt the same sort of seven-kinds-of-wrong dismay that he’d felt the first time. He grinned at Howard, “Prepare to regret your past choices, my friend.”

“I already do,” Howard assured him.

Mr. Naboo finished drawing on the mirror and Tony Harrison peeked over at it. “Aw, Naboo, you nasty bastard!” he said, then looked at Howard with a manic delight in his eyes, “You are going to hate this! Let the torturing commence!”

“Whoa, there,” Howard said over the sound of flailing tentacles, “assorted... chaps. Hang on, slow down. Let’s just take a moment... to reflect. Reflect. Ha. That’s one of mine.” Mr. Naboo did not look amused as he approached him with the vial of blood still in his hand. Howard tried to scoot back again, but, of course, there was nowhere to go. “I don’t think we need to introduce torture, at this juncture. Do we?”

“I think we do,” said Mr. Saboo. “Past time, I should say.”

Mr. Naboo again dipped his finger in the vial, the slick, red tip of it glistened like the poisonous eye of a feral cat. 

“No, no,” Howard pleaded, shaking his head, “No, couldn’t we reevaluate—”

“Shut up.” Mr. Naboo nodded to Bollo and Bollo held Howard’s forearms while he drew a mark on Howard’s right hand, “I’m not happy about this,” he said quietly. “Not just because you made me look like a boob. What you done to Vince ain’t right. He’s going to feel like a complete tit. He don’t need that. Not again. And he’s going to take it out on me. For being right about you.”

“Right about...? I’m not sure what you’re talking about. Please, I honestly don’t understand what you mean.”

Mr. Naboo drew another mark on Howard’s left hand, “Lies, lies, from tiny eyes.”

“Wait,” Howard said, as Bollo’s grip adjusted so that his hands were on either side of Howard’s head. “I admit it. I used... I used the necklace. I did that. But I didn’t do anything else. I didn’t do… rituals, or _traffic_ anything! I swear! I took it out and put it back, and that’s it! Hell, the first three to four times I used it were an accident!”

Mr. Naboo rolled his eyes. He dipped his finger and then tapped Howard’s forehead a final time. Howard’s skin felt tight where the blood had started to dry. He continued to protest, for all the good it did him. He felt his panic reaching a nadir, and then, suddenly, something changed.

He felt strange. Lightheaded, almost. Slightly distant. Probably, he thought, a pretty good way to feel when torture was imminent.

“Alright,” said Mr. Naboo from far away, “he should be feeling it now.” He went back to the dining table and picked up the mirror.

Howard was watching it happen to someone else. The mirror in Mr. Naboo’s hands was being directed toward someone else. The surface was turning toward someone else’s face. The reflection in it was... Howard’s. It felt strange to see his own face looking back at him where it didn’t belong, but there it was.

Perhaps, he fancied, he was looking out _from_ the mirror. He saw a man tied in a chair, a man who was also him. He laughed at how easy it was, this being in multiple places at the same time, and thought of how he could play pieces written for four hands by himself, about how he could send one of him out to get breakfast for Vince while the other went back to bed, and Vince would have scones and satsumas waiting for him, and Howard would be holding him on both sides, wrapping him up, keeping him safe. 

Howard could... see Vince.

In the mirror. He was there. Smiling, shining, radiant, sunlit Vince. Howard in the mirror tried to reach back over his shoulder to touch him. Howard in the chair tried to stretch his arm out toward him.

He saw Mr. Naboo in the mirror too. He looked at Howard’s reflection, then alarm widened his eyes, “What _the fuck_ did you do?” he asked, his voice penetrating through both of Howard’s brains.

Howard recoiled, the _pain_ of hearing Mr. Naboo’s voice was excruciating. “I’m sorry,” he said. It was his first instinct. Apologize, apologize for what he was, who he was, what he’d _done_. What had he done? He didn’t know.

“What did you wish for?” Mr. Naboo asked urgently. It hurt, the question. His mind felt like it was being run through a mangle, his thoughts extruded like dirty water from sopping wet fabric.

Even if Howard had wanted to, he could not have refused to answer the question. Immediately, he said, “I wished... for a shopkeep to appear, for fifteen euros, for a meat pie, for a new hat, for new shoes, to see Vince, to know what was happening, for—” Howard suddenly gagged, sickness burbling in his throat, “I wished for...” he heaved, could not speak. 

“Wished for what?”

The goad, the prod of Mr. Naboo’s voice forced a word out of him. “Vince’s—” a fist tightened around his vocal cords. 

_What you tellin’ him, boy? What you tryin’ to say? Haven’t come this far, have we, just to get thwarted at the end. You’ll keep your mouth shut!_

Howard strained against his bonds, _all_ of his bonds. The ropes that tied him, yes, but against the spell Mr. Naboo had cast, against whatever _other_ thing was inside him.

“Tell me,” Mr. Naboo insisted.

No matter what, there was no escape. On one side of him, crushing pressure that threatened to crack his temples, on the other, a gag that stole his breath and pressed against his throat like a collar of razors. Too much, too much of everything, and _no escape_.

_Not a word outta you, boy, or I’ll boil your insides in monkey piss, I’ll roast your guts in the foul juices of your own brain case, I’ll turn your spine into a skipping rope for me niece and feed your cock to an albino pigeon on Savile Row._

“Tell me what you wished for.”

There was shifting around Howard. Voices, movement; things were happening. He did not understand them. “Something’s wrong—” “—not there—" “—where—” “—who—” “—the wrong geezer—”

“Howard!” a whipcrack. That was the voice, the one he had to obey. “Tell me what you wished for. If you don’t tell me, I can’t help you.”

“Help me? You’re going to kill me, he’s going to—”

“Look in the mirror,” Mr. Naboo instructed. Howard was forced to look. He looked and he saw his face. Vince was still over his shoulder, but fretful now, worried, and at the edge of the mirror... tendrils of green.

_I’ll murder him, boy. I’ll cut him to ribbons, I’ll slice him up so good, he’ll look like a spiralized ham. You ain’t got those yet, but trust me, they ain’t pretty. Like a fucking accordion with the bellows cut up. Be a shame to spoil him, pretty little thing, such as he is._

“Howard, what did you wish for?” Mr. Naboo asked, his voice falling like a stone.

“Vin—” the words he was impelled to say burnt to ash in his throat.

He felt something predatory seize him, the same acquisitive _desire_ that he’d felt when he’d held the necklace and wished in Mr. Naboo’s study, that feeling of _take, take, take,_ that was overwhelming in its insistence. Because what it wanted, what _he_ , not Howard, had wanted, needed, was _a way out_ , an escape, a place to go. 

It was a bargain, _something for you, something for me_.

“Fuck’s sake, what did you wish for? What did you do to Vince?”

Howard couldn’t breathe. Darkness was closing in from the edge of his eyes and blooming in black holes like a cinder igniting a bolt of linen. 

What had he done to Vince?

Howard had opened the door, and even though Vince had only used the necklace once, once was enough. Especially since Howard had taken what didn’t belong to him and _left the space._

Howard couldn’t see, he could hardly hear. He could barely remember his own name. A feeling like a thousand needles prickling at him radiated from his sternum outward. 

_You done me a favor, boy, and you’ll do me another._

Howard wanted to protest, to deny that he would ever do anything for whatever horrible, hateful creature was twisting him up, but the words that the other had spoken evaporated out of his mind like water off a hot brick and he had no recollection of what it was he’d wanted to protest against.

Mr. Naboo looked up, “Something is happening.”

“Not without the instrument, he can’t—”

_The instrument_ , a single vicious, victorious thought, and then the blades were off his throat, gone, gone somewhere else, somewhere nice and _empty_.

Air rushed into Howard’s lungs, “I wished for his confidence,” he said, the words regurgitated like bile, “I didn’t know,” he said, frantically, “I didn’t _know_. He’s— Naboo, he’s after Vince!”

“After Vince?” asked Bollo. The hands on his shoulders were suddenly gone.

“Bollo!” Mr. Naboo shouted. “Stay with him,” he said to Mr. Saboo, and then he ran from the room. 

Mr. Saboo looked at Howard, then sprinted off.

“You slags! Don’t leave me out of it!” Tony Harrison shouted, tentacles flailing uselessly. “This is an outrage! Oi, what you doing there, mate.”

Howard was trying to free himself. He was rocking the chair, tipping it, trying to stand.

“None of that, now,” Tony Harrison said over the sound of a crash from upstairs.

Howard looked at the ceiling as though he might see through it. He fought against the ropes, felt the burn of the rough fibers cutting into his skin, “Come on!”

“Crunch time!” shouted Mr. Saboo. 

Tony Harrison shifted uneasily on the dining table, “Fucking tossers!”

Howard locked eyes with him. “Can you untie me?”

“No way I’m untying you. You’re a captive.”

“You can’t get off that table, can you?” Howard asked over the sound of another thump. “Untie me, and I can take you upstairs. Quid pro quo.”

“I don’t—”

There was a sound of smashing glass. “Watch it, you filthy ape!”

“We don’t have time for this!” Howard said, awkwardly scooting the chair toward Tony Harrison. “Untie me and we can sort the rest later!”

“Eeerrr,” Tony Harrison whined, “I dunno.”

Howard slid the chair around and positioned the arms of it as close as possible to the dining table. “Fucking untie me!”

Tony Harrison made a face of hideous indecision. There was a shout from upstairs and then, with a wince, he began fumbling with the knot at Howard’s wrist.

Howard strained to hear anything. “Hurry up.”

“Alright, I’m doing me best!”

“Can’t you use magic?” It was suddenly quiet. What the hell was happening?

“Oh, here we fucking go! _You’re a shaman, why not use a little magic,_ is that it?” Tony’s tentacles were bleeding _useless_. They actually seemed to be incorporating themselves into the knot rather than loosening it, “What, you think there’s just a spell for undoing knots, do you? Think if there were, I wouldn’t have already cast it?”

“ _Hurry up_!”

All at once, Tony’s tentacles spun, and the knot slipped free. Howard immediately started untying his other arm, and then the knot around his waist. He threw the ropes off himself and leapt out of the chair. He took half a step before he remembered that he was supposed to bring Tony Harrison with him. He stumbled back, tucked him under his arm and then ran for the stairs.

The door to Vince’s room was open. There was no sound from within. He didn’t know what that could mean. He didn’t bear the slightest concern for Mr. Naboo, or Bollo, or Mr. Saboo, but for Vince, Howard was terrified.

Dead. That was his first thought. Vince would be dead and Howard would have killed him. Howard’s heart beat a frantic tattoo. _Please no, please no, please no_.

He skidded to a stop just outside the door. He peered into the room. 

It was empty.

It had been torn apart, the order manically rearranged into chaos. The yellow dress, Howard saw, was on the floor, stained now, with something that looked uncomfortably like blood. He tried to convince himself that it wasn’t, that it was merely some lotion or potion from one of the hundreds of shattered glass bottles that shone like burst stars amongst the colorful ruins of Vince’s beautiful wardrobe, but he couldn’t quite manage the deception.

Scent hung so thick in the air that Howard felt as though he could push it aside like a curtain. 

Like a shroud. 

Vince’s window was smashed out. Howard spun around, looking for any sign, any sign at all—

“Mind how you go, I’ll be sick, you lurching about like that.”

Howard had completely forgotten that he was still holding Tony Harrison. His face felt numb. He looked down. Tony Harrison was looking up at him.

“Don’t suppose I can get a look at where we are?”

He adjusted him so that Tony was facing out.

“Fucking hell,” Tony said. “Those cock faces left me! This is an out—”

“Where would they have gone?” Howard asked, cutting him off. “Where would...” His foot caught on something. He looked down and saw Vince’s ascot, the cherry-blossom pink one he’d worn the night before. He stooped to pick it up. He remembered the flash of Vince’s hands removing it. His knees buckled. He slumped to the floor. Tony Harrison fell out his hands and rolled away. 

Howard clutched the ascot and buried his face in his hand. He inhaled roughly, his eyes filling with tears.

Vince was gone, lost. Suffering who knew what sort of agony because of Howard. Howard had ruined... he’d ruined everything. 

Had it really been only that morning when he’d been holding Vince in bed? He should have known something was wrong then. He had known that something was off, but he hadn’t any idea of the scope of Vince’s injury. He had no idea what he’d done.

How stupid could he get?

Howard felt a tentacle wrap around his hand, “You havin’ a cry, there, mate?”

“Yes,” Howard burbled.

He felt a whiplash slap, “Well, knock it off!” Too shocked to react, Howard could only watch as Tony Harrison sidled closer to him and then _bit_ him.

“Fucker,” Howard said, reanimating. He tried to shake Tony off, “What the fuck—”

Tony huffed unintelligibly while Howard shook his hand. “Get off me!” He shook his arm violently, and Tony Harrison lost his grip. He careened into the side of Vince’s bed and landed on the floor with a yelp.

“What the fuck did you do that for?”

Tony Harrison struggled to right himself. He slipped a little in the debris next to Vince’s bed. “Had to cheer you up, didn’t I?”

“Cheer me up? You bit me!”

“Ain’t crying no more, though, are you?”

“Fucking... maniac!” Howard said, tossing a sock at him. 

Tony Harrison grinned.

Howard shook his head, “Well, this is all just fantastic, isn’t it? Everyone is gone and I’m left with a... what the hell are you anyway? No, don’t tell me, I don’t want to know. Where would they have gone?”

“Probably after the instrument.”

“Oh, of course,” Howard tossed up his hand, “the _instrument_ , whatever the hell that is. I don’t suppose you could be a little less mysterious?”

“ _All right._ I liked you better when you were crying.”

Howard liked himself better furious. “That’ll teach you to bite me then, you berk. Why did you think I had anything to do with any of this?”

“We done an augury, didn’t we? Mystical forces don’t lie! Said you were mixed up in this up to your eyeballs.” He seemed to think a moment, “Actually, given that, I probably shouldn’t have untied you.”

“Too late for that now, isn’t it?” said Howard viciously. He was half-tempted to kick something (Tony Harrison) because he was untied, yes, but it did him absolutely no good whatsoever. He still didn’t understand half of what had happened, very probably could not have helped even if he did, and, worst of all, Vince was… he wasn’t dead. Howard would not entertain that he could possibly be so. 

Vince was _in danger_ and Howard had been the one to put him there. He bore down on that, chewed the gristle of it being his fault. If Howard wanted to be angry, his best, most familiar target was himself. 

Sad was useless. Anger... that at least kept him on his feet. “An augury? I suppose that’s like ripping out rat entrails to get, what? A look into the future or something?”

“Christy, mate! Who’s killing rats? Anyway, you want a look into the future, you’re going to need peyote, LSD, and some angel dust mixed in an unholy mild-altering cocktail. We just done a peek into the present.”

Howard didn’t bother asking how that was achieved, particularly since Tony Harrison seemed so keen on making up words and phrases. “And what did you see, exactly?”

“Well, a lot of fun colors, mainly. But, it was clear that you were linked to the bleeding instrument!”

“What? What do you mean linked? What even is it?”

Tony Harrison looked uncomfortable. “It’s an instrument, innit?”

“You don’t know.”

“Course I know.”

“Then what is it?”

“It’s… errr, secret shaman business,” Tony Harrison touched a tentacle to his nose. Like a twat.

“This is perfect. Don’t suppose you feel like doing another _augury_ right now, maybe, so that we can figure out where everyone has gone?”

“Well…”

“What?

“Can’t actually look into the present by meself, can I?”

“Is there anything you actually can do, or is the sum total of your possible contribution just sitting around, looking strange, and biting people in times of misery?”

Tony Harrison appeared to think this over. “I can do this,” he said, waving his tentacles in front of him like ribbons caught by a breeze.

Howard watched the pathetic display with dawning horror. Tony Harrison, he realized, had been left behind because he was absolutely, bloody useless. “Holy Christ. I can’t believe this. This is insane. I am going to lose my damned mind. Maybe I’ve already lost it.”

“Give us a minute,” Tony Harrison said, and then, something started to happen. His tentacles started to conjure an image. 

It was a vast desert, all blue rocks and orange sand. Howard saw waves of heat shimmering in the air. Wind blew and the sand was stirred. 

“You can conjure an empty desert,” Howard stated, flatly. 

“I can conjure the past. One of me many gifts. Oh, here we go. Check it out.”

In the desert walked two figures. 

One, a boy of perhaps ten, but his eyes seemed far older; ancient eyes that might have watched the death of a thousand stars, and the birth of a thousand more. 

The second figure swaggered in a way that probably would have looked commanding had it not been hampered by the box he held out in front of him. He looked as though he were not quite sure he was carrying it correctly. Indeed, he wasn’t doing it correctly. The box had a handle on the side, suggesting that it was meant to be carried like a briefcase. 

The mismatched pair stopped and faced one another.

“Very well, Kirk,” said the tall figure and Howard placed his voice immediately. “Here we shall part ways, you with the phylactery, I with the instrument. The items shall be hidden, and hopefully, with an entire universe of planets to choose from, the twain shall never meet again. The oath we have pledged to secrecy must not be broken. You recall the oath?”

“Yes,” agreed the child. 

“Good. Then this is farewell, for now.”

The boy nodded. He waved his hand in a vague sort of gesture and was gone.

Dennis stood alone in the empty desert. Howard leaned closer to the picture, to study the box that he held. It didn’t look special. Funnily enough, it looked like an actual instrument case. Maybe for a clarinet, or something a little larger. A saxophone, or trombone, but no; it was not the right shape for either. Its rectangular confines could have perhaps held a violin or similar, but nothing with a bell at the end.

A violin.

Suddenly, his strange conversation with Sir Dixon came back to him. The violin on his desk. The violin that both he and Vince saw, and Bainbridge there, staring at them like… like a bleeding farmer leading hogs to slaughter.

The image of the desert faded.

Howard turned toward Tony Harrison. “You did it!”

“I did?” asked he, as if that couldn’t possibly be right.

Howard began gathering things off the floor, thinking that he’d need, somehow, to disguise Tony Harrison to get him to Mayfair.


	17. The Instrument

If Howard had been of a mind to appreciate it, he might have found the whole thing a bit funny. He’d swaddled Tony Harrison in blankets in an attempt to disguise him as a baby. He was obviously anything but. 

Tony kept forgetting, for one, the ruse they were trying to perpetrate, and so would occasionally talk to Howard in his loud, nasally voice, and people would stare and Howard would have to hold him against his shoulder and bounce him like it was perfectly normal for finnicky babies to noisily gripe about motion sickness while they were being carried, which only served to make Tony complain louder, and with a greater quantity of profanity.

In the carriage, Tony had already been sick, but he’d at least warned Howard it was coming so that he’d had enough time to hold him over the side, which had alarmed a woman in the street to such an extent that she’d screamed at what was evidently a man holding a retching baby over the spinning wheel of a handsome cab. 

Howard, however, was not of a mind to appreciate it. 

He had no plan. He realized that about halfway through the journey. The sum-total of his strategy was to arrive at Brook Street. That was it. 

He had not taken the time to think. He’d merely acted, his instinct toward haste spurred by fear; a sense that he had to achieve or prevent _something_ , somehow. 

His thoughts turned again and again to Vince, to the injury he’d done him, to how he might heal him.

He had a thousand irrational impressions vying in his brain for how it could be done. He imagined himself slicing open his palm and giving Vince his blood, or feeding him the air from his lungs and inflating him like a balloon, or some other sort of horrible surgery that would _take_ from Howard and _give_ to Vince. None of it made sense. 

He had to hope that the shamen would be able to do something, that they were not all as useless and incapable as Tony Harrison seemed to be. He had to hope that they could defeat whatever monstrous being it was that Howard had given Vince over to.

Baboo Yagu, Mr. Saboo had called him. The Peppermint Nightmare. Howard could well recall his horrible, harsh voice scratching at the walls of his skull. It was torture to think that now it was Vince who had to live with that horrible voice in his head.

Howard stared ahead of them, thinking that the handsome moved too slowly. 

By all rights, it should have been midnight (surely, these sorts of arcane fiascos were meant to take place at midnight) and the traffic should have been less, but it wasn’t. 

It was sometime before 10:00 in the morning, and the streets were filled with ladies driving phaetons, with omnibuses, carriages, and cabs, with cattle drovers and boot blacks, and so many damned assorted _gadabouts_ that the handsome was frequently caught in eddies of traffic, dead patches where no current seemed to flow until, for no apparent reason, it suddenly sprang free and they lurched toward their destination once more. 

His futile desires spun, agitated by the slow passage of their journey, but their journey did pass. 

They turned at last onto Brook Street, and the cab stalled again. Unable to wait any longer, Howard leapt down and threw an uncertain quantity of euros up at the cabbie.

Howard pelted his way up the street, dodging through the foot traffic on the pavements in a somewhat reckless, madcap dash. Tony Harrison complained of the jostling, but Howard didn’t heed him. The running felt good, felt productive. He took the stairs two at a time and slid to a stop just outside the entrance of the house. 

The front door was ajar.

Howard swallowed, apprehension stealing over him.

“What’s going on?” Tony Harrison asked.

“The door is open,” Howard told him. He glanced down, “Listen, is there anything that you can do? Have you got any spells, or… anything?”

“I’ve got a few tricks up me sleeve, don’t worry.”

Howard’s concern was not alleviated. Tony Harrison, after all, wore no sleeves. 

Howard pushed open the door and gently shut it behind him.

The house was eerily quiet. It was never precisely noisy, of course, but Howard was aware, as he walked through the cavernous foyer of his echoing steps, of the creaking that issued from the chandelier overhead, of how the jungle plants seemed to sigh as he walked past them.

“What’s going on?” Tony Harrison asked at full volume.

“Nothing. Be quiet. Christ,” Howard whispered. He unwrapped Tony from the blanket and held him out in front of him, “Could you be any more awkward to carry?”

“Should’ve brought me papoose. Slot me in there and I’m hands free,” Tony said, his voice pinging off the walls like the report of a gunshot.

Howard shushed him. He could hear something. A sort of tapping, low at first but increasing from a dull, ill-defined susurrus to thunderous clacking in mere seconds. 

There was a crash, a crack, and a shatter. Howard took a step backward. His eyes darted around the room. It had begun to vibrate. Above him, the chandelier swung, the leaves of the plants stirred, a portrait fell off the wall; something was coming. He saw the tip of a grey horn first, a nonsense shape that directed his thoughts firmly toward _can’t be_ , but it was. 

A rhinoceros barreled into the foyer. It swung its head from side to side, the motion somehow jerky, not at all the fluid motion of a creature of muscle and bone, because, Howard saw from the glint in its hollow glass eyes, this rhinoceros was _not alive_.

It had a half second of primacy, of being the sole object of Howard’s focus, before a transcontinental menagerie burst into the room. Bison, big cats, birds, scuttling shellfish; all of them formerly dead (still dead, really), but somehow reanimated.

“Can’t untie knots, but this,” Howard said, mostly to himself.

He ran. Tony Harrison shouted. Together, they did the only sensible things that there were to be done.

The animals parted to either side of Howard, effectively surrounding him before he even made a dozen steps worth of progress toward the stairs. They moved in a chaotic sort of organization, seemingly aware of the others, but not wholly aware of themselves. Their cohesion was not the cohesion of individuals, but rather that of a single organism as they trapped him in a net of taxidermied flesh, as they swirled around him like a whirlpool. 

Howard didn’t know where to look in the tumbling mass. He caught flashes of pattern that he knew belonged to zebras, to leopards, to toucans, or baboons, but he didn’t see the whole of anything. He kept being drawn back to their eyes, still and dead; unseeing, horrible eyes that had nothing behind them but sawdust.

The utter wrongness of them, the lack of sentience in them, was repulsive.

The circle continued to tighten. The animals recklessly charged into one another, ripping their own hides and bleeding wool batting, revealing the metal armatures that had replaced their bones. 

An antler clipped the edge of Howard’s coat. He jumped away from the contact. At any moment, he expected he would be gored. He turned his face into his shoulder, actually clutched Tony Harrison tighter to him (Tony’s tentacles had all wrapped around Howard’s arms in a sort of noodley hug), and he prepared for death, thinking of Vince, of how he’d failed him.

Then _clack!_ A single, unified strike. 

The cacophonous sound of hooves, paws, and claws reverberated through the hall like the dull ringing of a gong. 

Howard was panting, his heart hammering. He was shaking as he opened his eyes. The animals had frozen.

Directly in front of him was the rhinoceros, its horn perhaps an inch from Howard’s face. All of the animals were facing him, a solid wall of abused bodies that were nearly fused together, they were stood so close. 

Howard heard the click of boots on the marble. He glanced down at Tony Harrison and took a gamble. He set him down and edged him with his boot toward the immobile forest of legs at his back. He didn’t look to see if Tony crawled away or not.

“Moon?” Sir Dixon’s voice broke the silence like a hammer through a plate. “That you?”

Howard didn’t like that he was, evidently, anticipated.

“Yes,” he said.

“Excellent, you’re right on time. I believe you’ll find that we’ve handled your friends quite satisfactorily.”

“My friends?”

“Your little shaman _buddies_. I think I’ll shoot that gorilla, by the by. Mount him up for my collection.”

At this, the collection slid apart so that Howard could see Sir Dixon standing in their midst. Their glass eyes pulled at their desiccated skins as they looked toward their apparent master.

Sir Dixon smiled, then jerked his chin, “Come along, then.”

Howard felt the sharp edge of a horn dig into his shoulder blade. The animals behind him had woken and were shoving him forward. If he had wanted to resist, he wouldn’t have been able to.

They walked down the hall toward Sir Dixon’s study. “You played your role perfectly,” Sir Dixon said. “Better, in fact, than if I had brought you in on the scheme. You found the vessel, weakened the barrier on the phylactery, and now here you are. To do your final _bit_ ,” he pulled on the word _bit_ in a way that stretched it bizarrely.

“My bit?” Howard asked, shying away from the leopard that jerked along beside him.

“Yes. Your bit,” Sir Dixon said. He turned toward Howard and looked down at the leopard. “I forgot. You haven’t got a clue, have you? You’ve managed it all _by accident_.” He laughed with his singular mirthlessness, “Christ, you’re a fuck-up.”

Howard didn’t try to deny it.

The door to Sir Dixon’s study was open. At first glance, it looked very empty, probably because the animals that normally crowded the room were, well, _otherwise occupied_ , but what the room lacked in stuffed occupants in made up for in living ones. 

Vince stood in the middle of the room. Howard’s heart leapt before it plummeted, leapt before he realized that he wasn’t looking at Vince.

Vince never would have menacingly leered at the bound and gagged shamen at his feet, would never have had such mad hate burning in his eyes. No, the man in front of him was as much Vince as the taxidermied animals were living animals.

Howard was looking at a stranger wearing Vince’s skin. He was looking at Baboo Yagu.

He leaned over Mr. Naboo, snaked his hand into the front of Mr. Naboo’s shirt and pulled out a massive, gaudy pendant. It was approximately four inches in diameter with a diamond the size of a pigeon egg glittering like cosmic fire in the center. It was etched with strange, unreadable script.

It did not look like the necklace as Howard had known it, and yet he recognized it immediately. 

Yagu caressed the phylactery, then raised it to his lips and kissed it, “Played right into me hands, you have. All of you.” His voice sounded wrong coming from Vince’s mouth.

He turned toward Howard with a malefic grin. “I told you he’d come,” he said to Sir Dixon. “Got me hooks into him and when I hook a man, I don’t never let go. I pull him in like an eel, gut him, fry him up, and shit him out.”

Sir Dixon smiled at this. He leaned against his desk. 

A wildebeest nudged Howard from behind and pushed him forward until he was standing in the middle of the room, in between the two sofas, near the shamen, near Yagu himself. The rest of the menagerie filed into the room and positioned itself in a rough circle.

Yagu stalked toward Howard. The way he moved was both like and unlike the way Vince moved. Vince’s grace had been replaced by brutality, his fidgety energy subverted by collected lethality. 

Howard wanted to look away, but he forced himself to look. He was desperate to find something, some sign that Vince, his Vince, was _there_ , was somehow reachable. 

He didn’t see one. 

All he saw were Vince’s eyes narrowed into daggers, his lips twisted into a foreign smile, his skin tinted faintly green; if Vince was still within his own body, he was buried deep.

Howard shuddered. 

“Tell me, boy,” Yagu began, standing now so close that Howard could detect the faintest traces of emerald that had worked their way into the blue of Vince’s eyes, “What good is life without a little tune?”

“What?” Howard asked. 

Yagu’s gloved hand shot out and gripped Howard’s face. His fingertips dug into Howard’s cheeks as he pulled Howard’s head forcefully down. He bared his teeth, “Music, boy. You know music. You like music. Reckon you bleed music, don’t you? I heard it all, when you made your wishes, heard what you’ve got inside that rotten old nut of yours. So, tell, me, boy. What good is life _without a little tune?”_

“I don’t know, sir,” Howard said with some difficulty. 

Yagu leaned close to him, the wrongness of him so thick, it was suffocating, “I can tell you, boy. It ain’t no good. No good at all. You know what the worst part of that phylactery was? Silence. Silence for years, for ages, for eons.” Yagu pushed Howard away, turned and took a step back before he leaned close again. 

“I had a man called Craig what lived in me index finger,” Yagu said baring his teeth in what might have been called a grin, “Used to be me and Craig would play the violin together, we was pretty good, too, but Craig started getting too big for his britches, he did, so I had to slice ‘im up. I cut him up like a party frank, shredded him like a vegetable marrow on a box grater, cut him down so fine, he evaporated. That was the day the music died, it was. Ain’t had a song since Craig, y’see.”

Howard wasn’t quite sure how to respond. “I’m… sorry, sir?”

Evidently, this was satisfactory. Yagu nodded, “So you should be boy, so should we all be. But let that be a lesson to you. Cross me, and I’ll wreck you; I’ll do you so fast, you’ll be dead twenty seconds before I’ve killed you, even if you’re me own finger. Understand, boy?”

“Yes,” Howard said.

“Good. Now, about that song,” Yagu said with a smile that jackknifed so quickly from menacing to genial that Howard felt slightly motion-sick from the spin. He held the phylactery up and waved his hand over it. From nowhere, sheet music appeared in his hand. “You can play an old man a song, can’t you boy?”

“I suppose,” Howard said hesitantly. His eyes darted over toward Mr. Naboo, who was staring at him so intensely that Howard felt certain he was trying to tell him something. What, though, he did not know.

Yagu held the music in front of Howard and Howard took it from him. He looked down at it, the melody already sketching itself into his mind. 

“You can play that, boy?”

“I could,” Howard agreed.

Yagu held out his hand and the violin flew to him. “Then play for me,” he said, offering the instrument to Howard. 

Howard swallowed. His eyes flicked again to Mr. Naboo and Howard finally understood. This was _his bit_. For some reason, Yagu needed him to play, and if he needed Howard... 

“Why, um… why should I, sir?”

A glint came into Yagu’s eyes. He turned toward Sir Dixon, “Hear that? The boy wants to know what’s in it for him, he wants to know what I can do for him!”

“Bad move, Moon,” Sir Dixon said menacingly. “I’d just do as the man says, if I were you.”

Yagu reached down into his tall hessian boots and pulled out a knife. He flicked it open and held it to Howard’s face, the point worryingly near Howard’s eye. “I could slice you up, boy.”

“You could, sir,” Howard agreed, hoping that he was right about Yagu needing him, “but if you did, I don’t know that I could play you anything.”

Yagu’s expression darkened, then, as suddenly as a falcon falling upon a rabbit, he burst out laughing. He closed the knife and put it away. “Maybe not, boy, maybe not. Very well. How about you play my song and I make your dreams come true. All them things I heard you wanting. I can give you those, boy.”

“Things?” Howard asked.

“The fame, the money, the glory. All of this city worshiping you and falling at your feet. Your music, boy, everyone clamoring to hear it. A legend, just like you want to be. I can make all that happen for you, all for one little song.”

“And if I don’t want any of those things?”

“You do want them. I know you do. I’ve seen inside you.” Yagu ran his hand along the side of Howard’s cheek.

Howard saw himself on stage, roses on the ground at his feet while thunderous applause burst around him. Fame, fortune, concert halls filled with people there just for him. He could be a legend, twice as famous as Liszt, better known than Beethoven. He would show them, show them all. 

His parents, his mother, his whole family, all of the village kids who used to ignore him, all of the prats at Christminster who’d never bothered to learn his name. All the Mrs. Gideons and Dixon Bainbridges of the world, the people who called him worthless, who thought he was _dog shit_. He’d show them how very wrong they were.

He looked toward the instrument. It gleamed at him like a promise. 

The wood was polished so high that it shone like a mirror. Howard saw the whole room reflected dimly, the shapes of the animals, the tied-up group of shamen, Sir Dixon standing in the distance, and Vince’s, _Yagu’s_ reflection too, his grin splitting Vince’s face like a scythe, wearing the skin that didn’t belong to him.

The skin that Howard had selfishly, foolishly granted him, by hunting for all of the things he’d _wanted_. All of the stupid things that paled in comparison to what he’d lost. The promise of fame rang hollow. If there was anything in the world that Howard wanted, it was to fix that mistake.

Whatever spell had been cast was broken. “I want those things, sir,” Howard said, softly. “But I want something else more.”

“Something more than glory? More than money? More than lady fame chained up to your ankle and doing your bidding?”

“Yes,” Howard said. He looked toward Mr. Naboo again, this time hoping that the shaman would understand what Howard wanted to tell him. _Tell Vince that I’m sorry, that I love him. Tell him goodbye._

Howard looked down at the floor. “Spare the life of Vince Noir. Give him back that which I took from him and then leave him be. I could be your vessel, sir. I’ll play your song if you will take me instead.”

There was a sound from the shamen, some mutual exclamation of disgust or anger, but Howard ignored it. 

The man wearing Vince’s skin tilted his head. He blinked, then leaned in closer to Howard. “I could give you anything you like and that’s what you ask me for?”

Howard nodded.

Yagu narrowed his eyes, “A touching bit of sentiment, that, but I can’t wear _you_ , boy. You’d not suit me at all. Too tall and that. Anyway, you’ve got to play and you can’t do that with me along,” Howard felt all his hope slide to the floor in a puddle, but Yagu continued on. “Don’t look so glum, squire. I’m nothing if not a _reasonable man_. And you’ve touched me dirty old black heart and all.” He turned slowly toward Bainbridge.

“I say, Yagu, what are you looking at _me_ for? Surely, one of them,” Sir Dixon said with a gesture to the shaman, “would do just as—”

“Nah, it’s gotta be you, don’t it? You made a bargain with me too, or have you forgot?”

“I was only meant to distribute the items, to find you a vessel and a player—”

“And you ain’t done half of that, have you?” Yagu growled. “Not really. You got lucky, didn’t have to do the work. This man,” Yagu said, jerking his head toward Howard, “has served me better than you, has offered himself up to me, body and soul—”

“I don’t think offered myself up is _exactly_ how I’d put it—”

“But you have, squire,” Yagu said with a disturbing facsimile of one of Vince’s saucy smiles, before he turned again to Banbridge, “Whereas you, you haven’t come through. Far as I can see, you ought to face the consequences. The boy asks a boon, wants to save his lady, and I’m inclined to let him. I never forget what people promise me, and I never forgive when they don’t deliver, and I don’t like worms what try to cheat me.”

Yagu’s hand stretched out toward Sir Dixon.

“Surely, we can come to some sort of—” Sir Dixon pleaded, but it was too late. Yagu’s fist closed. Sir Dixon’s eyes flew wide, he clutched at his throat and then he convulsed, staggering drunkenly forward.

Vince collapsed, the instrument and the phylactery both hit the floor next to him.

Howard had the barest moment to register all this, before he, himself, doubled over in pain. The sheet music he’d been holding slipped out of his hand and scattered on the floor. He felt a cold stab in the pit of his stomach, something like an imaginary blade of ice that melted and was suddenly gone. 

A wall of noxious scent that he’d not noticed before smacked into him like he’d galloped into it, the stale, ordinary scents of Sir Dixon’s study were intensified until he could hardly breathe without wanting to bring up sick. He staggered, just barely managing to catch himself against the arm of one of the sofas. He gulped several queasy breaths before he was able to stand upright again.

When he did, he caught the angry flash in Mr. Saboo’s eyes, the look of resignation in Mr. Naboo’s, something like gratitude in Bollo’s. Howard turned from them.

Across the room where Sir Dixon had been was Yagu. He grinned at Howard, his face was a twisted, psychotic paroxysm of Sir Dixon’s normally twisted and somewhat psychotic visage.

If Yagu was there, then—

Howard looked down and fell on his knees at Vince’s side. 

Vince was very still. His eyes were closed.

Howard was terrified, for a moment, that Yagu had killed him, whether on purpose or by accident, but then he saw Vince’s chest rise and fall, and he released a held breath. The mingled scents of tobacco, of wood polish, and formaldehyde became easier to bear.

He brushed the hair off Vince’s forehead. His skin was damp and chill, but he was undeniably alive and, Howard hoped, whole once more. He gathered Vince into his arms and then lifted him off the floor. He laid him down on the sofa, wishing that Vince would open his eyes, that he would wake up and prove beyond a doubt that he was well again, but he only slept. 

“Now, squire. How about that song?” Yagu said. He still stood near the desk, had not, in fact moved a pace from where Sir Dixon had been.

Howard nodded. He walked back over to the violin and bent down to pick it up. The phylactery was there too. Could Yagu see him from where he was? Was the artifact worth anything any longer? His instinct told him no on the first point and yes on the second. Until Howard played his song, the phylactery was still very useful indeed.

If Howard had not had the benefit of having Yagu’s voice in his mind for the brief time he had, it was possible that he would have left it lying, but Yagu had been in his mind, and Howard knew precisely what sort of madman he was. The worst sort. 

It wasn’t in Howard’s nature to be heroic, but still. The world was a vastly safer place without Baboo Yagu in it.

As surreptitiously as he could, he scooped up the phylactery and slid it toward the bound shamen. It landed near the hem of Mr. Naboo’s robes. It was the best he could do, and, as usual, nowhere near good enough.

Howard grimaced and stood. He looked down at the instrument in his hand and realized the first bit of difficulty in his little gamble. “I um… I don’t play violin, sir.”

Yagu laughed, “I know that, boy. You’re a Joanna man, ain’t you? That’s fine by me. She’s a special instrument, can be anything she likes. Set her over there,” Yagu said, indicating a bare patch of floor.

Howard set the violin down and Yagu extended his arms. The violin swelled. Brown wood turned black, the instrument’s body split, and its strings multiplied. Keys blossomed out of its neck; its tuning pegs grew into pedals.

An enormous, beautiful grand piano was before him. The sheet music fluttered up off the floor and arranged itself neatly on the rack.

Howard blinked a little dumbly. 

“Go on then, boy.”

There was not much else to do. Howard sat down on the bench, traced over the sheet music with shaking hands. It was a difficult piece. A near impossible piece. 

It was only now that Howard apprehended the second bit of difficulty he faced.

His fear, his _chokes_ were back in full force. His fingers felt stiff, almost painful. The notes swam in front of his eyes. He wiped his forehead on his sleeve. He closed his eyes. When he opened them again, he saw that Yagu was not amused by his hesitation. 

His grin had faded into a snarl, his eyes were flat as unfinished plaster. They slid toward Vince’s inert form.

Howard understood well enough. If he didn’t do this, it wouldn’t be Howard who suffered.

He tried to remember what it had been like when he’d had Vince’s confidence in him, tried to find that spark of anticipation that came from being listened to. He couldn’t.

_You’ll make such an awful racket—_

Howard cut the voice off at the knees. This wasn’t performing for an audience anyway. This was something else. This was something that needed to be done _for Vince_.

Howard had to prove that it was true; that for Vince, he could do anything. Even if it felt wrong, even if it felt the world might end, he needed to know that he could do the right thing.

He gulped down a steadying breath and spread his shaking fingers over the keys. He stared at the sheet music in front of him. Four notes. He just had to hit four sharped F’s and he’d be started. He could do that.

He struck the first razor-sharp stab, held it. It was only a matter of continuing, now. The music started slow, down in the basement of the piano’s range, a folding march that went over itself, then folded again, then jumped an octave, grew faster, more complex.

“It’s working,” Yagu said, rapturously. Howard could not see it, but Bainbridge’s skin had gone from faint green to washed-out chartreuse. “Keep playing, boy! Play it faster, now, faster!”

Howard hardly heard him. The music was already filling his mind. Gradually, it absorbed him fully within it. 

Burbling sixteenth notes were added on his left hand. The melody came faster. Strikes of a thousand hammers against glass. He saw them in his mind, the little sharpened rock picks striking, striking, chipping away at the crystalline walls all around him. 

Howard’s hands raced, faster and faster. He lost track of what they were doing. He was no longer reading the music; he didn’t have to. He was a conduit, merely there to facilitate the relentless pounding notes, the music played itself, Howard as much an instrument as the piano in front of him. Every measure now was faster than the last. Impossibly, Howard played on.

Bainbridge grew greener, his shouts more maniacal. The taxidermied animals quivered with excitement. 

A tall figure burst suddenly into the room, a scimitar raised above his head. With him was a child, and, strapped to his chest, was Tony Harrison. 

“Aww yeah, get ready to get fucked!”

“Go, me pretties,” Yagu shouted. The animals sprang into action. “Slice them up, rip them up to rags! It’s happening, boy, it’s _happening_!” Yagu said ecstatically. His hands twisted up toward the ceiling and plaster started chipping down, “Play it!”

Howard could not have stopped if he tried. He was propelled through the song even as chaos erupted around him. Dennis cleaved through a flamingo, spun and drove his sword into the chest of a ram. The boy, Kirk, sprinted across the room, dodged and weaved between charging bodies, toward the other shamen. 

Howard saw none of it. Heard none of it. The entire universe was under his fingers, the music all-consuming. He felt it; the melody was cracking, breaking apart. The structure was shattering, the chords themselves destabilizing, as the pace increased again and again. It was very nearly over.

Kirk undid the ropes around Mr. Naboo’s wrists and Mr. Naboo shot forward, pressed the phylactery into Kirk’s hands. The barest instant of surprise was over almost as soon as it had begun. Kirk whispered something against the gem in his hands and—

The music _changed_. 

Yagu shrieked. He charged forward, animals forming in ranks at his side as he ran toward Kirk.

Howard’s hands didn’t miss a beat. 

A single note. Once, twice, five times, a tingling flourish, the note again, ten, eleven, twelve… Howard was chiming the hour. Midnight, the beginning of the end. He flourished a phrase then, a dissonant stab, and another, a dart, a spin, another stab of the keys, and the dance began.

If the other song had built into frenzy that could not be maintained, this one was chaos coming under control. Here, too, was the repetition of a theme, but the madness in this music was _containment_. The melody doubled back and across, wove right, left, diagonal, came from the underside and over the top. Howard wove strand after strand of melody into a mesh.

He was aware of nothing but his own hands. 

He did not see Dennis stepping into Yagu’s path, nor the animals that ran toward where Howard sat, nor the invisible shield that they struck against as Mr. Naboo and Mr. Saboo raised their hands and chanted in unison. He didn’t see Tony Harrison waving his tentacles frantically and disintegrating the tiger prawn, nor Bollo clock an antelope between the horns before it could reach Vince’s sleeping form.

Yagu screamed viciously, swore and threatened, but the tide had shifted. Bainbridge’s skin paled, the gem that Kirk wore around his neck was slowly turning green.

Howard was possessed by the same unnatural force that propelled him before. His hands moved with an inconceivable speed and precision as he wove the music in on itself over and over, tighter and tighter, until the notes were drawn so tight, they formed a noose.

There was a break in the song, a quick moment of silence wherein Howard saw him. _Baboo Yagu_ as he actually was; green-skinned, twisted and furious, screaming his inanities and threats, promising retribution, and then Howard played the closing phrase, sealed up the piece with an almost cheeky brevity.

The notes rang in his ears, echoed in his brain, but the voice was gone. Howard withdrew his hands to himself. Silence wrapped around him like a blanket.

He turned around. The shamen and Bollo were all breathing hard, their eclectic outfits somewhat worse for wear. Whatever stuffed animals hadn’t been destroyed were back on their stands, posed as they once had been. Sir Dixon was collapsed on the ground at Dennis’ feet, his heavy-lidded eyes shut, his moustache twitching.

Howard looked to his left. Vince was still sleeping on the sofa.

Howard nodded, “Well, that’s alright, then.”

He pitched forward onto the carpet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The pieces Howard plays in this chapter are fifty percent made up and fifty percent based off of the two in the links below.
> 
> Check them out, if you like!
> 
> [ Grieg- In the Hall of the Mountain King ](https://youtu.be/gSY-wD4l5DM)
> 
> [ Saint-Saëns / Liszt: Danse Macabre, Op.40/S.555](https://youtu.be/sSIyW9MfD60)


	18. A Mackerel Sky

Music, demonic, pounding music raked over him and stripped him raw. It was everywhere, the noise of it drowning him, wrapping over his head and suffocating him, weighing him down and pulling him deeper and deeper as the notes pounded louder and louder, his brain vibrating with them.

Three rapid raps, the sound of his mother’s stick hitting the floor.

Howard snapped awake.

He wasn’t sure, upon opening his eyes, where he was for a moment. For some reason, it seemed that he should have woken in his childhood bedroom, that there should have been a window looking out over green hills, with green leaves edging in around the sides of the panes, that he should have heard the lowing of cows, or the cluck of chickens, for it seemed to him that time had been stripped off him and he had reverted to a child. He certainly wanted someone to hold him close, to comfort him, after the horrifying dream he’d had, but such a hope was an extraordinary one.

He had not known the sort of comfort he longed for, even as a boy.

He raised his hand to his pounding head, afraid to otherwise move, unsure, still, where he was. 

The room was dark, windowless as it was. He could barely make out the shadowy shape of a dresser off to his right, nearer at hand was a nightstand and an oil lamp. He turned toward the nightstand and in the turning, he suddenly oriented himself. He was in his bedroom at Mr. Naboo’s rooming house. 

And then he realized everything that he’d taken for a nightmare, the twisted, spinning music, the horrible wrecked animals, had all been real. It had all happened. 

If that had happened, then the other bit had happened, too. The part where he’d selfishly risked Vince’s body, his life, possibly his very soul, had betrayed his trust in the worst way possible, and thus slain any regard Vince might have held for him. Or so it could be safely assumed.

Howard pressed the heel of his palm into his eye. The pressure relived some of the pain above his eye-socket, but none of the pain in his heart.

He sat up. He was still half-dressed in his shirt and trousers. It was the work of a moment to rise and complete the job. He pulled on his coat, then picked up his other coat. He folded it and tucked it in his satchel, then did the same for his remaining shirts, for his trousers, for all of his things.

He did not realize immediately what he was doing, but once he’d made his bed and packed away the last of his things from his dresser, he knew what his course of action had to be.

He had to leave. He would see his mother and tell her… tell her that he would return home.

He opened his door and went into the hallway. 

He glanced at Vince’s door and paused, wondering if Vince were asleep within. He wanted to see him, and yet was desperate to avoid the same. It would have been honorable to wait until Vince could confront him and abuse him as Howard deserved to be abused, but Howard had no wish to do the honorable thing. He could bear anything except the absolute knowledge that Vince hated him, and that was all that Howard could hope to gain by any interaction.

Let this, then, be his final kindness to himself. To avoid any confrontation and thus the absolute certainty of Vince’s hatred. He walked on, each step weighing more heavily than the last.

The hallway was painted in the light of early morning, the sidelights beside the door admitted the grey, filtered sunlight in diffuse patches on the floor. The day, it seemed, would suit Howard’s mood if nothing else. He crept toward the vestibule to collect his greatcoat and his hat when the most extraordinary sound caught his attention.

Vince’s laugh, from the parlor. It had not occurred to him that Vince might be awake, could have arisen first after his ordeal, but he apparently had, and had recovered to such an extent that he was able to laugh at something.

Like a dog keen to his master’s voice, Howard turned toward the noise, indeed took an unthinking step toward the parlor, the pull of Vince’s joy was so strong, before he could stop himself. 

Howard had never had luck, as such. That was probably why the floorboard beneath his foot creaked terribly as he set his weight upon it.

“Howard?” Vince called.

Howard froze where he stood and then spun round, hastily making his retreat toward the door.

“Howard,” Vince said again.

Howard turned.

Vince had come into the hall. He wore a silk dressing gown of oriental design, patterned all over in whooping cranes and lotus blossoms, the gentle peach color of it against his skin just the same as the first blush of sunlight against cloud.

He was all of Howard’s hopes answered, for he looked perfectly whole. Indeed, his eyes were sparkling with residual laughter, like it might have been any day of their acquaintance, like they might have gone in to have breakfast together as had been their habit.

Howard looked down at the floor before he could see Vince’s expression sour.

Vince walked toward him, Howard could only suppose with the intent of striking him, and was shocked when, instead, Vince’s arms wrapped around him.

“You were sleeping for ages,” Vince said, “are you alright? Naboo said that you’d—why have you got your bag?”

“I’m leaving,” Howard said, or attempted to say. He rather mumbled it. His throat was too tight to manage proper words.

“What?” Vince asked. He pulled back and looked up at Howard, puzzlement in his blue eyes, “Did you say you’re _leaving_?”

Mr. Naboo and Bollo stepped out of the parlor. Mr. Naboo gave Howard a nod (possibly the warmest greeting Howard had ever received from him) and the he pointed down the hall toward his study, “Me and Bollo got some work to do, yeah? We’ll be just back there.”

“Yeah, sure,” Vince said. 

Mr. Naboo looked at Howard, then back to Vince. He seemed almost apologetic as he added, “If he is leaving, let me know. He’ll have to be,” he tapped the side of his head.

“I know,” Vince said.

Mr. Naboo shuffled down the hall, Bollo in tow, and went into his room. 

Howard looked down at Vince, “What does he mean, I’ll have to be… what?”

“S’not important,” Vince said. “Here, come on,” he took Howard by the hand and led him into the parlor. He sat Howard down on the sofa and, very probably would have taken his satchel out of his hands as well had Howard not hugged it against his body.

Vince saw this and chewed his lip. He sat next to Howard, and then stood again. He paced restlessly in front of the upright. “Look, Howard, I know that it’s been a bit weird, you know, what with yesterday and all, but you… I mean, you can do what you like, yeah? I don’t mean that you can’t, and it’s your choice, and I know that it’s sort of a lot to ask for a lot of people, this sort of thing, the—”

“What are you on about?” Howard asked him.

Vince shook his head, “You leaving, of course.”

“Well, I… rather have to, don’t I?”

Vince stopped his pacing and slouched. “If that’s how you feel.”

“How I feel?” Howard asked, “I… had assumed… I’m sorry, but you do know that I nearly killed you, don’t you?”

“Killed me?” Vince said. He shook his head, “Howard, you saved me. Naboo said how clever you were and all, and how he tied you up, and tortured you, and you still helped, and how you even summoned the head shaman and Kirk, and how brave you—”

“No, no. No. None of that, none of that is true,” Howard said, clearing away the words with a wave of his hand. He chewed his lip in consideration, “Well, the torturing bit is true, but I assure you I was not helpful in the least. I certainly never summoned anyone… I only, fuck’s sake, I risked your life. I… are you not furious with me?”

“No,” Vince said. “Why would I be?”

“For the reasons I just said! Christ, Vince! You should… you should _throw_ something at me. Smash an oil lamp over my head, set me on fire, _something_.”

Vince laughed, “Is it all that Shakespeare you read that makes so you so dramatic?” 

Howard looked up at in in shock, “Dramatic? You could have died, you very nearly were _lost_ because of what I did.”

“But I’m not,” Vince said, simply, as though that should have closed the topic forever.

Except it didn’t. How could Howard allow himself to be forgiven so easily? He tossed a hand up into the air and then pushed his fingers through his hair. He shook his head. “Listen, this… It’s for the best, if I go. I don’t belong in your world, where there’s magic, and music, and... I don’t belong anywhere near you. I’ve proven that.”

“You’re wrong. You didn’t mean to—”

“Intended or not, the consequences of my selfish actions—”

Vince rolled his eyes, “Howard, you only used that necklace because _I told you to_ , remember? And you only did it because I—” he stopped and looked down at the floor, “I wanted you with me, alright? I was the one who was selfish, who let you think that I— Fucking hell. I wanted Johnny Top Hats out of that bleeding music hall bad enough that I didn’t think for a second about you using the necklace to do it. You said it was dangerous, remember? But I _made you do it.”_

“You didn’t make me do anything. I did it because I wanted to, in the end. I—”

Vince cut him off, “We’re both to blame, then. I promise you, this ain’t the first scrape I’ve got into with the occult, and it probably ain’t going to be the last, and that’s my point, alright? I understand wanting no part of any of this, no part of me, or whatever, but if you think that I want you gone, I don’t.”

Howard absorbed this with the success of oil absorbing water. “Why not?”

“Because… Christ, Howard. Do you want to go?”

“I—” Howard shook his head. He looked around him, at the mantel, at the upright, at the carpet under his shoes, searching for his answer. “I don’t know. No,” he said, and Vince’s eyes briefly lit, “but, yes, because… I almost killed you. That’s not me being dramatic. You could have died. I did that. I don’t deserve to be anywhere near you. I… you should hate me. Frankly, I’m fucking awful.” 

“But you’re not, Howard,” Vince insisted. “An awful person wouldn’t have come after me, they wouldn’t have offered to take my place, or made a deal with that _thing_ that was inside my head. An awful person would have run away and got famous and never spent a minute worrying about it. I know awful people, Howard. I promise you I do. And you’re not one of them.”

“You can’t mean that,” Howard said, meeting Vince’s eye, looking for the lie, for the contempt or mistrust that had to be there.

“Why not?”

“No one likes me. Not even people I’ve never actually spoken to.”

“Yeah, well, they’re pricks, aren’t they?” Vince said so hotly that Howard couldn’t help smiling at him. Vince reflected his joy back at him for a moment before his expression slowly dimmed. “Anyway,” he said softly, “you’re more or less the only person who seems to like me, so…”

Howard couldn’t help himself. He laughed, “Are you mental? Everyone loves you. I’ve seen it in action. More than once.” He looked up at Vince’s face. He expected to see a smile, or at least a smirk, for surely, Vince was taking the piss, but he didn’t.

What he saw was Vince’s large eyes gazing into the middle distance, his expression blank. Howard’s laughter died.

“People don’t,” Vince said. “Not really. That’s what I was trying to say, the other morning. Howard, I’m a liar, alright? It’s not just the magic stuff. You should know that I… I’ve lied to you. Sort of… a lot. I just say things, sometimes, I dunno, and I pretend about stuff because—” he caught his bottom lip with his teeth. He tucked his hands into his sleeves and wrapped his arms around himself, “I’m selfish, see? Asking you not to go. But I want you with me because you… you don’t need me to pretend. For you to like me.”

He had gone so small, had withdrawn so tightly into himself, his narrow shoulders hunched, his eyes far too glassy.

It suddenly seemed criminal of Howard not to hold him.

He tossed his satchel on the ground, stood up and wrapped Vince in his arms. Vince tucked his head against his chest, and Howard put his hand on the back of Vince’s neck. Vince’s breath hitched and Howard stroked down his back. “It’s alright, little man.”

“Please don’t go.”

“Vince—”

“Please, Howard. At least give me a chance to fuck it up first. Don’t go because of something stupid like—”

“Almost killing you?”

Vince’s shoulders shook with hesitant laughter. “Yeah.” Howard held him tighter. 

“I don’t deserve you,” Howard said.

Vince looked up at him. He smiled, “You don’t. You deserve someone better.”

Howard raised his hand and traced Vince’s cheekbone. Vince had yet to shave. His cheek was rough under Howard’s thumb. The solid, warm reality of him in Howard’s arms defied comprehension. How could such a man choose him, want him, even after all Howard had done? It was too much to bear. 

Howard shook his head, “No. Impossible.”

Vince closed his eyes and Howard watched the troubled sky clear as he opened them again. “So... you’ll stay?”

Howard nodded.

Vince slid his hands up Howard’s torso, up his neck, so that he held him on either side of his face. He did not pull Howard toward him, but Howard went anyway. It seemed, after all, the only thing to do.

******

Over the course of the next few days, Howard had an apology made to him by Mr. Naboo, or, just Naboo. It was explained to Howard that his name was not, as he had always assumed, a surname but just his name. His only name. He allowed Vince to explain the bulk of it, where he was from, what his home planet was like, and only bothered to intercede with a salient detail here and there, or a _yeah_ of agreement.

He also thanked Howard for preventing Tony Harrison’s capture. It was he who had summoned Dennis and Kirk, he who had ultimately saved the day. Saboo was having kittens over it, so irritated was he by Tony’s constant crowing, a fact which seemed to please Naboo immensely.

Bollo was properly introduced to Howard and, once Howard overcame his initial ( _and completely justified_ ) concern, he found himself in possession of a rather grateful friend. It became clear that Bollo was incredibly attached to Vince and that Howard could probably have done nothing better in Bollo’s eyes than secure Vince’s safety.

Vince _was_ safe, and, so far as Naboo’s magic could detect, whole again. 

Vince convinced Mr. Fossil that Howard had fallen ill, but that he would, shortly, be able to return to the music hall. In the interim, Johnny Top Hats was brought in as a substitute, a necessary but temporary evil, or so Vince insisted. He was positive that they could get Howard’s chokes off him and that they’d be performing together soon.

It all seemed, then, to have worked out.

And then his mother’s letter arrived.

It had arrived in the morning, but Howard put off reading it until the evening, when the white paper with its accusing red eye had finally stared at him sufficiently for him to feel that he could ignore it no longer. He picked it up off the side table (Vince huffed irritably at Howard's shifting as he was using Howard's thigh for a pillow while he read a letter of his own) and tore it open, the seal breaking messily in two.

_Howard,_

_While I am disappointed that you did not keep our appointment last week, I was not terribly surprised. Your obstinance was not an unexpected difficulty, though the reason for it has been utterly mysterious to me. I have only ever had your best interests at heart and it is this, the concern of a mother for her son, that leads me to write to you. I have heard a report of a very alarming nature regarding you and your behavior as of late. I will not set in writing a single word of the ugly rumor that has reached me, but I must insist upon your presence in Hanover Square immediately to personally refute it._

She did not bother to sign.

Howard crumpled up the note and tossed it in the fire.

“What was that?” Vince asked, lifting his head off Howard’s thigh.

“Nothing,” Howard said. He stroked Vince’s hair and Vince laid back down. “Nothing,” he repeated.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. Here we are. BobSkeleton gave me a lovely prompt that I quickly turned into a homework assignment rather than a gift. I am so insanely sorry for how long this turned out to be. I wanted to keep it reasonable, but I obviously failed _miserably_.
> 
> If it’s any consolation, I loved your prompt so much, I lost my cotton-pickin’ mind over it and um… did this. 
> 
> Mostly, I just want to thank you for the opportunity to write this fic. I never would have thought of doing a Victorian Boosh AU and this was so much fun to write! Thank you, thank you, thank you for this idea! Honestly, this fic has felt far too self-indulgent to be anything other than a gift to me. So, again, thank you so much for this!
> 
> If it feels like there is still a lot of stuff for these two crazy kids to work out, well, there is. Part II might be in in the works, but I wanted to write that without anyone being obligated to read it so… yeah. Just pretend that there is no epilogue if you like!
> 
> As always, thanks for reading!


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